People can do just about anything whenever they have the chance. For even a brief of time, some people can even hurt those who are willing to protect them.
An example of this can be seen when about 25,000 email addresses and passwords allegedly belonging belonging to organizations working to combat the coronavirus pandemic, were dumped to the internet by an unknown party.
The Washington Post first reported the dumping of the emails, saying that it belonged to six organizations, all of which are related to fighting the coronavirus, on April 21. They include the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the World Bank, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Gates Foundation, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Hackers and far-right extremists who got their hands on the credentials have been using the email addresses to spread coronavirus conspiracy theories — including linking the novel COVID-19 disease with HIV.
That according to SITE Intelligence Group, a watchdog for online terrorism and extremism.
The lists of the email credentials first appeared online on Pastebin, a text storage site.
Then someone created a link to that material, and posted it on 4chan, a message board notorious for its hateful and extreme political commentary. This was then shared on Twitter, as well to far-right extremist channels on Telegram.
“Neo-Nazis and white supremacists capitalized on the lists and published them aggressively across their venues,” said Rita Katz, SITE’s executive director. “Using the data, far-right extremists were calling for a harassment campaign while sharing conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic. The distribution of these alleged email credentials were just another part of a months-long initiative across the far right to weaponize the covid-19 pandemic.”
SITE that managed to compile how many emails and passwords had been released, believed that 9,938 allegedly came from the National Institutes of Health, 6,857 allegedly came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 5,120 allegedly came from the World Bank.
Rita Katz, SITE’s executive director, said that:
"Neo-Nazis and white supremacists capitalized on the lists and published them aggressively across their venues."
“Using the data, far-right extremists were calling for a harassment campaign while sharing conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic. The distribution of these alleged email credentials were just another part of a months-long initiative across the far right to weaponize the covid-19 pandemic.”
While SITE was unable to verify whether the email addresses and passwords were authentic, but the group said that when the information was released, people and hackers started using the attempt to hack and harass almost immediately.
Katz said that while material from old hacks does appear on the dark web occasionally, "we have not yet found any rock-solid proof of that for this specific case."
An Australian cybersecurity expert, Robert Potter, said he was able to verify that the WHO email addresses and passwords were real.
Potter, who is also the chief executive of Australian company Internet 2.0, said that he was able to gain access into the WHO computer systems using email addresses and passwords posted on the internet.
