April 22, 2020 / By Barnini Chakraborty | Fox News
Nearly 25,000 email addresses and passwords belonging to members of the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as a host of others that have been on the front lines of the coronavirus fight have been posted online, according to SITE Intelligence Group.
SITE, which monitors online extremism and terrorist groups, said the stolen information was released Sunday and Monday and almost immediately used to incite harassment and hate seen by far-right extremists, according to VICE, which first reported the news.
“Neo-Nazis and white supremacists capitalized on the lists and published them aggressively across their venues,” Rita Katz, SITE’s executive director said. “Using the data, far-right extremists were calling for a harassment campaign while sharing conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic. 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.”
Robert Potter, an Australian cybersecurity expert, confirmed to The Washington Post that the hacked WHO email addresses and passwords were real. He said he was able to gain access to the WHO’s computer systems using the new information posted on the Internet.
Fox News has not been able to independently verify the authenticity of the stolen cyber material.
