Unknown hackers have dumped nearly 25,000 email addresses and passwords belonging to employees of National Institutes of Health (NIH), World Health Organization (WHO) and Gates Foundation among other groups engaged in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, the Washington Post reported late Wednesday, citing a report by SITE Intelligence Group.
According to the Post, the login data was almost immediately used to attempt hacking and harassment by far-right extremists.
According to the report cited by the paper, the data was first posted to notorious website 4chan, known for its hateful content, and later to text-storing service Pastebin, to Twitter and later to far-right channels on Telegram.
“Neo-Nazis and white supremacists capitalized on the lists and published them aggressively across their venues. Using the data, far-right extremists were calling for a harassment campaign while sharing conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic,” SITE’s executive director Rita Katz was quoted as saying in the article published by the Post.
“The distribution of these alleged email credentials were just another part of a months-long initiative across the far-right to weaponize the COVID-19 pandemic,” she added.
