WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM HACKED

Subject: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM HACKED
From: SINSULL
Date: 05 Feb 01 - 12:37 PM

Giant OOOPS! Generally, I disapprove of this sort of behavior but somehow it strikes me funny that Bill Gates' home phone number and credit card numbers are out there for all to see and use. Hope they publish the list on the web.

Protesters hack World Economic Forum's computers

By BRUNO GIUSSANI, THE INDUSTRY STANDARD (February 05, 2001) ZURICH - Antiglobalization computer hackers have infiltrated the computer systems of the World Economic Forum and stolen personal information of most of the participants in the forum's recent annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, forum officials confirmed. The hack was first reported yesterday by the Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung. The paper said it received, anonymously, but clearly from the forum's opponents, a compact disc containing 161MB of data apparently copied from the forum's Web server.

Charles McLean, the forum's director of communication, called the incident a case of cybercrime and said the Swiss police had been alerted. Forum officials planned to inform members today.

The disc is said to include a list of 27,000 names, some of which are paired with data such as e-mail addresses and phone numbers; another list of 1,400 credit card numbers and names; and spreadsheets detailing the travel schedules, hotel accommodations, session registrations and payments, and Web site passwords of the 3,200 participants in this year's meeting, which took place Jan. 25-30.

If the details of the hack are confirmed, the case would be particularly sensitive because participants in the forum included such high-powered executives as Bill Gates of Microsoft Corp., Michael Dell of Dell Computer Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. CEO John Chambers and Yahoo Inc. CEO Tim Koogle, as well as such public figures as United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

The event stirred huge controversy because of demonstrations staged by antiglobalization movements. Recently, these groups staged protests in Melbourne, Australia, Prague and, most notably, Seattle, where they blocked a gathering of the World Trade Organization. This, however, is believed to be the first known case of antiglobalization computer piracy, although last June a group of hackers calling itself S-11 rerouted Web users from Nike.com, the Web site of sports clothing retailer Nike Inc., to another Web site decrying the forum, of which Nike is a member (see story).

Some of the data, in particular internal schedules and planning documents as well as flight details (without identification), have also been released on the Independent Media's Web site. There is no report so far of malicious use of the stolen information, indicating that the hacking was probably staged as a display of technological ability by the activists.

Sources within the World Economic Forum said its internal databases haven't been tampered with, adding that specialists are at work in Geneva, where the forum is based, to determine the nature and the extent of the stolen information.

Subject: RE: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM HACKED
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 05 Feb 01 - 12:40 PM

As if all those numbers weren't changed within minutes of them being stolen... but it's a neat article...