EU Parliament Suffers A Major Attack
The European Parliament has been the victim of a major data breach that has meant that private data of more than a thousand staff and members of the European Parliament have been exposed online. The files available online contain passwords, job descriptions and other personal information.
The fact that the incident appears to have been discovered not by the institution itself, but by Shadowmap, an Indian cyber security company, raises some serious EU security questions.
It comes a decade after a major breach, reportedly initiated in China, the details of which have never been made fully public.
Shadowmap founder, Yash Kadakia, told the news website Politico that it had discovered files containing data such as passwords, job descriptions and other personal information via an internet portal that is part of the Parliament’s domain and is used by its officials. It is believed that the data, which had been taken offline, related to the European Peoples' Party (EPP), the largest political group in the European Parliament.
Kadakia, said his group had found a major data breach. and was able to easily access data and passwords from members. and after reieving a denial from the Parliamnet denied the claims went on to reveal more details of the alleged breach.
The unprotected data also includes information of thousands of people with links to political parties and institutions, including members of EU agencies and authorities like law enforcement agency Europol, the European Data Protection Supervisor, border agency Frontex and others, Kadakia said.
The exposed data also includes 15,000+ users including journalists, members of a number of political parties and institutions.
Marcel Kolaja, the Parliament's vice president for IT policy, confirmed to Politico that data included 1,200 accounts of elected officials and staff, along with another 15,000 other accounts of EU affairs professionals,
The information came from a system that had been run under the European Parliament’s official europarl.eu domain, Kolaja said, but the data had not been hosted by the institution itself.
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