IMF hack ‘on behalf of hostile nation’

A MAJOR cyber attack on the International Monetary Fund was aimed at stealing sensitive information, a cyber security expert said, as the race to lead the body which oversees the global financial system heats up.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is helping investigate the attack on the IMF, the latest in a rash of cyber attacks to target high-profile companies and institutions.

“The IMF attack was clearly designed to infiltrate the IMF with the intention of gaining sensitive insider privileged information,” said Mohan Koo, managing director of Dtex Systems, a cyber security company.

A June 8 internal memo from IMF chief information officer Jonathan Palmer said the IMF 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,” a statement from the IMF read.

The IMF’s board of directors was told of the attack on Wednesday, though the assault had lasted several months.

The IMF says its remains “fully functional” but has declined to comment on the extent of the attack or the nature of the intruders’ goal.

News of the hack came at a sensitive time for the IMF, which is seeking to replace former managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who quit last month after being charged with the attempted rape of a hotel maid.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde remains the frontrunner to replace him, although Stanley Fischer, the Bank of Israel governor and a former IMF deputy chief, has emerged as a late candidate.

Jeff Moss, a self-described computer hacker and member of the Department of Homeland Security Advisory Committee, said he believed the attack was conducted for a nation-state looking to either steal sensitive information about key IMF strategies or embarrass the organisation to undermine its influence.

He said it could inspire attacks on other large institutions. “If they can’t catch them, I’m afraid it might embolden others to try,” said Moss, chief security officer for ICANN, a non-profit corporation that oversees and manages several internet-related tasks on behalf of the US government.

Tom Kellerman, a cyber security expert who has worked for both the IMF and the World Bank, said the intruders had aimed to install software that would give a nation state a “digital insider presence” on the IMF network.

That could yield a trove of non-public economic data used by the IMF to promote exchange rate stability, support balanced international trade and provide resources to remedy members’ balance-of-payments crises.

The code used in the IMF attack was developed for the occasion, said Kellerman.