IMF Becomes Latest Victim of Cyberattacks

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into a a recent cyberattack on the International Monetary Fund, a spokesman told Reuters Saturday. "The FBI is working this with IMF," the spokeswoman, Lieutenant Colonel April Cunningham of the Air Force said in an e-mail. The IMF recently told its staff that its systems were hacked, and security experts expect that sensitive insider information was the target. The World Bank cut off its direct computer link to the Fund as a result. The IMF is only the latest organization to recently fall victim to sophisticated hacking attacks on secured servers. Sony SNE, RSA, and Lockheed Martin LMT have all undergone cyber intrusions in the past few months. The attack comes at a particularly difficult time for the IMF, as its embattled former managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn just resigned amid sexual assault allegations. According to the Reuters report, "A June 8 internal memo from Chief Information Officer Jonathan Palmer told staff the Fund had detected suspicious file transfers and that an investigation had shown a desktop computer "had been compromised and used to access some Fund systems." "At this point, we have no reason to believe that any personal information was sought for fraud purposes," it said.