DAYO ADESULU WITH AGENCY REPORT
Nearly 25,000 email addresses and passwords allegedly belonged World Health Organization, WHO, Gates Foundation , National Institutes of Health, NIH are dumped online
The person or persons that posted them are unknown. However, the exposed emails addresses and their passwords have immediately became fodder for right-wing activists attacking the organizations.
The lists, whose origins are unclear, appear to have first been posted to 4chan, a message board notorious for its hateful and extreme political commentary, and later to Pastebin, a text storage site, to Twitter and to far-right extremist channels on Telegram, a messaging app.
“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.”
The report by SITE, based in Bethesda, Md., said the largest group of alleged emails and passwords was from the NIH, with 9,938 found on lists posted online. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had the second-highest number, with 6,857. The World Bank had 5,120. The list of WHO addresses and passwords totaled 2,732.
Smaller numbers of entries were listed for the Gates Foundation, a private philanthropic group whose co-founder, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, last week announced $150 million in new funding to combat the pandemic. Also targeted was the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese research center in the city where the pandemic began that has been accused of a role in triggering the outbreak.
Source: Washington post