A Breach at I.M.F.

By Brad

At the New York Times, David E. Sanger and John Markoff report that the International Monetary Fund has been the victim of a substantial cyber attack:

Several senior officials with knowledge of the attack said it was both sophisticated and serious. “This was a very major breach,” said one official, who said that it had occurred over the last several months, even before Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French politician who ran the fund, was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a chamber maid in a New York hotel.

Asked about the reports of the computer attack late Friday, a spokesman for the fund, David Hawley, declined to provide details or talk about the scope or nature of the intrusion. “We are investigating an incident, and the fund is fully functional,” he said.

According to the report, I.M.F. officials have yet to reveal where the attack may have come from due to the breach being “a delicate subject because most nations are members of the fund.”