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Europe's most powerful bank hacked [Europe] [Times of India](Times of India Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) LONDON: Europe's most powerful bank has been hacked. The European Central Bank (ECB) said on Thursday that its systems have been hacked, with attackers stealing email addresses and contact data from the organisation. The bank however said no internal systems or market sensitive data were compromised. In a statement, the bank said "The database serves parts of the ECB website that gather registrations for events such as ECB conferences and visits. It is physically separate from any internal ECB systems" The bank says that most of the stolen data was encrypted, but that parts of the databases including email addresses, some street addresses and phone numbers were stored in plaintext. Also stolen, in encrypted form, was data on downloads from the ECB website. The break-in was only discovered when the thief emailed the bank to ask for financial compensation for the data. The bank is contacting all people whose email addresses or other data may have been compromised. The ECB is the central bank for Europe's single currency, the euro. The ECB's main task is to maintain the euro's purchasing power and thus price stability in the euro area. The euro area comprises the 18 European Union countries that have introduced the euro since 1999. The European Central Bank and the national central banks together constitute the Euro system, the central banking system of the euro area. The main objective of the Euro system is to maintain price stability: safeguarding the value of the euro. The bank said, "On Thursday, there had been a breach of the security protecting a database serving its public website. Email addresses and contact data were stolen. Theft was from database that is separate from any internal system. No market sensitive data has been compromised". The ECB is contacting people whose email addresses or other data might have been compromised and all passwords have been changed on the system as a precaution. ECB said, "The ECB takes data security extremely seriously. German police have been informed of the theft and an investigation has started. ECB data security experts have addressed the vulnerability". (c) 2014 Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited |