{"id":22877,"date":"2020-03-23T16:45:01","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T23:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=22877"},"modified":"2020-03-23T16:45:01","modified_gmt":"2020-03-23T23:45:01","slug":"hackers-target-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=22877","title":{"rendered":"Hackers target WHO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The World Health Organization (WHO) was unsuccessfully targeted by elite hackers earlier this month in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/uqmmvzybchhsjzjhsgnccsmmcyskhyhddfcbzpkmwhqnq_kdmlvvmhmjlvfvttrpdf.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=http:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/uqmmvzybchhsjzjhsgnccsmmcyskhyhddfcbzpkmwhqnq_kdmlvvmhmjlvfvttrpdf.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1585092167763000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEIqc9A5ELiF9MuwcwOyE0Y1LbEmQ\">Reuters reported Monday.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>WHO Chief Information Security Officer Flavio Aggio told Reuters that while the hacking effort was unsuccessful, the WHO has seen a spike in attempted cyberattacks since the coronavirus crisis began.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There has been a big increase in targeting of the WHO and other cybersecurity incidents,&#8221; Aggio told Reuters. &#8220;There are no hard numbers, but such compromise attempts against us and the use of [WHO] impersonations to target others have more than doubled.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Reuters was tipped off to the attempted hack by Alexander Urbelis, a cybersecurity expert and attorney with Blackstone Law Group, who picked up on a live effort to hack the health agency on March 13.<\/p>\n<p>The identity of the hackers involved is not known, though according to experts contacted by Reuters, a cyber crime group known as &#8220;DarkHotel&#8221; is suspected of carrying out the attack. This hacking group has previously targeted officials and business in the U.S., China, Japan and North Korea.<\/p>\n<p>The WHO did not immediately respond to The Hill&#8217;s request for comment on the story.<\/p>\n<p>The attempted cyberattack comes after the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was targeted in a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/dpjszlgkjttfblbtfrcjjfssjgfwtgtnnmjkldwshtpch_kdmlvvmhmjlvfvttrpdf.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=http:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/dpjszlgkjttfblbtfrcjjfssjgfwtgtnnmjkldwshtpch_kdmlvvmhmjlvfvttrpdf.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1585092167763000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG2oF_bClWIylh5TqgZDZUZgwhUHA\">separate cyberattack earlier this month.<\/a>\u00a0HHS Secretary Alex Azar told reporters that the hackers involved were not able to penetrate any networks, and that there was no data breach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The World Health Organization (WHO) was&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,12,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-science-tech","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22878,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22877\/revisions\/22878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}