Zee Media Bureau
New Delhi: The European Central Bank (ECB) said on Thursday there had been a breach of security protecting a database serving its public website. This led to the theft of email addresses and other contact data left by people registering for events at ECB.
As per reports, no internal systems or market sensitive data were compromised.
The theft came to light after an anonymous email was sent to the ECB seeking financial compensation for the data. While most of the data was encrypted, parts of the database included email addresses, some street addresses and phone numbers that were not encrypted. The database also contains data on downloads from the ECB website in encrypted form.
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 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.
Further, German police has started investigation in this case.
