Satyam, Indian Outsourcing Company, Infiltrates and Hacks World Bank's Network

As reported by Fox News, there was a massive security breach at the World Bank.  Fox has posted an internal World Bank memo that was released when the Bank learned of the initial breach, which you can see here. 

 

Fox News says that in September 2007 it was discovered that “intruders had gained full and total access to all of IFC's worldwide information — including all incoming and outgoing e-mail — for at least six months. "They were downloading everything and anything," says one insider, who says that IFC's monitoring systems were extremely weak. "They [intruders] had full access."

 

The article goes on to state:

 

The second major breach — of the bank's treasury network in Washington — was discovered in April 2008. The World Bank's Treasury manages $70 billion in assets for 25 clients — including the central banks of some countries. It carries out substantial collaborations with the world's finance ministers on public wealth and debt management, runs an active bond-trading desk in Washington, and does everything from currency trading to capital markets financings.

 

After a forensic analysis of the treasury breach, bank investigators discovered that spy software was covertly installed on workstations inside the bank's Washington headquarters — allegedly by one or more contractors from Satyam Computer Services, one of India's largest IT companies.

 

The software — which operates through a method known as keystroke logging — enabled every character typed on a keyboard to be transmitted to a still-unknown location via the Internet.

 

Upon its discovery, insiders report, bank officials shut off the data link between Washington and Chennai, India, where Satyam has long operated the bank's sole offshore computer center responsible for all of the bank's financial and human resources information.

 

Satyam was also banned from any future work with the bank. "I want them off the premises now," Zoellick reportedly told his deputies. But at the urging of CIO De Poerck, Satyam employees remained at the bank as recently as Oct. 1 while it engaged in "knowledge transfer" with two new India-based contractors.