European Central Bank Shuts Down 'BIRD Portal' After Getting Hacked
Aug 16, 2019
The European Central Bank (ECB) confirmed Thursday that it had been hit by a cyberattack that involved attackers injecting malware into one of its websites and potentially stealing contact information of its newsletter subscribers. Headquartered in Germany, the European Central Bank (ECB) is the central bank of the 19 European Union countries which have adopted the euro and is itself responsible for supervising the data protection practices of the banking system across these countries. In an official statement published Thursday, the ECB said unknown "unauthorized parties" had managed to breach its Banks' Integrated Reporting Dictionary (BIRD) website, which was hosted by a third-party provider, eventually forcing the bank to shut down the site. Launched in 2015, BIRD is a joint initiative of the Eurosystem to the euro zone's central banks and the banking system, which provides banks with a precise description of the data that aims to help reporting agents e...