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The US Treasury said Monday it would seek to borrow a record 550 billion dollars in the October-December period to help stabilize the financial sector hammered by the global credit crisis. The fourth-quarter borrowing estimate was substantially higher than the 408 billion dollars announced in July, and is a record high for quarterly estimates, a Treasury official said.
"The increase in borrowing is primarily due to higher outlays related to economic assistance programs, lower receipts, and lower net issuances of state and local government series securities," the Treasury said in a statement.
Another major international financial institution has had its computer system attacked by unknown cyber-hackers, FOX News has learned.
The discovery of the assault last week threw into crisis the Washington, D.C. based International Monetary Fund (IMF), which offers emergency financial aid to countries faced with balance-of-payments problems, and provoked a shutdown of IMF computers that lasted for several days.
In October, FOX News reported that the computer system at the World Bank had also been hacked over a period of months.
FOX News has been unable to determine what, if any, information may have been obtained by the hackers. The IMF denies any critical intrusion took place.
See my post up the page about IMF hacking and notice the dates in that also...week before Nov 7th? is that what it says...it would fit with yer Nov 3rd link
FOX News has been unable to determine what, if any, information may have been obtained by the hackers. The IMF denies any critical intrusion took place.
World Bank Under Cyber Siege in 'Unprecedented Crisis'
Friday, October 10, 2008
The World Bank Group's computer network — one of the largest repositories of sensitive data about the economies of every nation — has been raided repeatedly by outsiders for more than a year, FOX News has learned.
It is still not known how much information was stolen. But sources inside the bank confirm that servers in the institution's highly-restricted treasury unit were deeply penetrated with spy software last April. Invaders also had full access to the rest of the bank's network for nearly a month in June and July.
In total, at least six major intrusions — two of them using the same group of IP addresses originating from China — have been detected at the World Bank since the summer of 2007, with the most recent breach occurring just last month.
In a frantic midnight e-mail to colleagues, the bank's senior technology manager referred to the situation as an "unprecedented crisis." In fact, it may be the worst security breach ever at a global financial institution. And it has left bank officials scrambling to try to understand the nature of the year-long cyber-assault, while also trying to keep the news from leaking to the public.
www.foxnews.com...
It is still not known how much information was stolen. But sources inside the bank confirm that servers in the institution's highly-restricted treasury unit were deeply penetrated with spy software last April.
In total, at least six major intrusions — two of them using the same group of IP addresses originating from China — have been detected at the World Bank since the summer of 2007, with the most recent breach occurring just last month.
The crisis comes at an awkward moment for World Bank president Robert Zoellick, who runs the world's largest and most influential anti-poverty agency, which doles out $25 billion a year, and whose board represents 185 member nations. This weekend, the bank holds its annual series of meetings in Washington — and just in advance of those sessions, Zoellick called for a radical revamping of multilateral organizations in light of the global economic meltdown.
Zoellick is positioning himself and the bank as an institution that can help chart a new path toward global financial stability. But that reputation, more than ever, depends on the bank's stable information infrastructure.
In reality, the situation is serious enough that federal investigators have been called in. "We're not talking about hackers playing games or messing up our website," insists a senior member of the bank's IT department at its Washington headquarters. "It's about the FBI coming last summer and saying, 'You should take a look at your systems because we think something weird is going on.' It's about the intruders knowing what information they wanted — and getting to it whenever they wanted to. They took our existing data stores and organized them in a way that they could be easily accessed at will."
In plainspeak: "They had access to everything," says the source. "They had the keys to every room at the bank. And we can't say whether they still do or don't until we fully and openly address what's happening here."
The data raids are not a matter of stealing inconsequential bits and bytes. The World Bank's data center is literally a treasure trove of vital financial information from around the globe. As a clearinghouse for financial data from both governments and companies, the bank's computers could provide intruders with both a financial and intelligence gold mine — from inside information on bids and contracts to the minutes of confidential board meetings.
IMF officials clamped down on their computer systems on November 7, after they discovered spyware that was quickly spreading through the institution's high-security computer system. Spyware is software that is secretly installed on a computer to intercept information or take control of the system.
The IMF's network link to the World Bank, the world's largest anti-poverty agency, was also temporarily severed, a move that IMF spokesman Bill Murray described as a "precaution."
But IMF officials strenuously deny that any lockdown of its computers took place, and insist that no important or sensitive financial information had been affected.
"There was no lockdown as far as I'm aware" says Murray. "I'm not aware of any major breaches, but enhanced security measures have been taken."
Prodded further as to the discovery of spyware, Murray responded: "As part of our ongoing [security] regime, we've had a scan of Fund personal computers and laptops and we found some workstations that did have malicious software, but absolutely no evidence that any sensitive information or systems were breached."
As FOX News reported on October 10, the World Bank itself suffered a series of cyber-attacks starting in the summer of 2007, both at headquarters and at other offices around the world. The World Bank strenuously denies that the intrusions took place, and none of the bank's 24 board members contacted by FOX News would discuss the matter. But sources told FOX News that at least one of those breaches also involved spyware, penetrating the World Bank's ultra-sensitive Treasury unit, which manages a $75 billion portfolio for itself and for several nations
The World Bank, however, did not take the dramatic step of shutting down all its computer systems to eliminate any spyware. Security experts say it is possible that the bank may have inadvertently infected the IMF — simply by sharing some wires in the IMF's sublet building. Moreover, as FOX News reported last month, hundreds of workers previously employed by an Indian contractor that is barred from Bank contracting work on security grounds still work at the institution, either as regular staffers or as employees of other contractors.
Rep. Paul Kanjorski is the second-ranking Democratic member of the House Financial Services Committee, the number two man to Committee Chair Barney Frank. Way back in 2001, Kanjorski was the ranking Democratic member of that committee's sub-committee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises. Today he is the chair of that sub-committee. If there's anybody on the Democratic side of the aisle who should bear some responsibility for where we are today, somebody who has been in a position and had the power to do something BEFORE the crisis, it's Paul Kanjorski. Yesterday, by the way, he voted FOR the bail-out, to be expected since he was one of the Democratic negotiators for the bill. Now turn the clock back to 2001, 7 years ago, a couple of months before 9/11. Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) was the chair of the sub-committee that Kanjorski now chairs. That sub-committee is responsible for the oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Rep. Baker was holding hearings regularly to examine the risks to the entire financial system posed by those creatures of Congress. In 2003 (as I noted in my earlier post), Baker warned of the perils of mortgage-backed securities (one of those phrases we all learned too much about this week). Baker said: I have concerns that if appropriate resources aren't allocated for internal risk management, the consequences will be far more severe than just a real estate slowdown. The losses would fall quickly through the capital these companies have and down to shareholders and taxpayers. These companies have some of the lowest capital margins of any financial institution in the nation, yet, at the same time, they are two of the largest. The concern is that if something doesn't work out the way they predict, the American taxpayer could be called on to pay off the debt in some sort of bailout. Baker was saying the same things in 2001. What did Kanjorski have to say back then? In an opening statement at a hearing on July 11, 2001, he said: Our second topic concerns H.R. 1409, the Secondary Mortgage Market Enterprises Regulatory Improvement Act. This bill would dramatically restructure the current regulatory system for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In my opinion, it also represents a solution in search of a problem. Nearly a decade ago, Congress created a rational, reasonable, and responsive system for supervising GSE activities, and that system with two regulators is operating increasingly effectively. H.R. 1409 would unfortunately interrupt this continual progress. In a parliamentary system, Kanjorski would have been forced to resign after Baker's hearings exposed the risky behavior of Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson, and others at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Of course, he did not, and his bad judgment in 2001 was rewarded with the chairmanship of that subcommittee when the Democrats took power in 2006.
Something big is being covered up, beyond a simple "electronic run on the banks".