Hackers steal data of 214,000 Austrians

Hackers have stolen the personal data of 214,000 Austrian television viewers and radio listeners, a subsidiary of national broadcaster ORF confirmed Monday, reported dpa.

On Friday, a group calling itself AnonAustria hacked the computer system of the ORF-owned firm GIS, which collects user fees and got hold of the client information, including the bank details of 96,000 people, GIS said.

AnonAustria is believed to be a local branch of a wider network of hackers known as Anonymous, who last week announced they had hacked NATO computer servers.

In an online statement, AnonAustria said its cyber raid was not intended to harm ORF customers, but highlight the broadcaster's lax security.

"Such sensitive data must not be stored over many years and must not be so easily available to everyone," the group said.

On Thursday Anonymous said it had accessed restricted data from NATO servers, a claim that the military alliance has so far not confirmed.

Anonymous has been linked with numerous denial-of-service internet attacks, which incapacitate websites by bombarding them with queries from networks of hijacked computers.

Suspected members of the group have been arrested in Britain, The Netherlands and most recently in the United States, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation linked 14 people to a cyber attack on PayPal - in apparent retaliation for closing down a donation account for the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.


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