The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) revealed on Wednesday that it was the target of a “sophisticated cyberattack” in which personal data and confidential information was stolen from more than 515,000 highly vulnerable people in several countries.
These are people separated from their families due to armed conflict, migration or disaster, as well as missing persons and their families and detainees.
The data comes from 60 national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies (the equivalent in Muslim-speaking countries) – meaning they involve data from a similar number of countries – and were stored on servers by the ICRC, one of the most respected in the world and operating in the most difficult contexts.
“The biggest concern for us is the potential risk that this breach entails, including the fact that it could be made public,” said the institution’s director general, Robert Mardini, in a statement released in Geneva, where the ICRC is based.
Mardini stated that at the moment it is not known who could be responsible for this attack and its intentions, but he addressed them saying that “their actions can cause more harm and pain to those who have already been through incalculable suffering”.
“The people behind the information you have are among the most dispossessed. Please do not share, sell, leak or use this information in any way.”
One of the hacked information packages concerns a project called “Restoring Family Ties”, which seeks to bring together family members separated by war, migration and disaster, but due to the cyber attack, the ICRC was forced to shut down systems with which it is administered.
According to the organization, the project allows the daily gathering of 12 people considered missing with their families.
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