BBC server hacked on Christmas Day

December 30, 2013 05:15 pm | Updated 05:15 pm IST - London

BBC , the world’s largest and oldest broadcaster, reportedly fell victim to a hacker who tried to sell access to the system over Christmas.

The hacker, claimed to be Russian, took over a BBC server and launched a Christmas Day campaign to convince other cyber criminals to pay him for access to the system.

However, BBC ’s security team secured the site on Saturday.

A BBC spokesperson refused to confirm or deny the reports, saying: “We do not comment on security issues.”

The server belonging to the British public broadcaster was reportedly broken into via a server usually used for uploading large files.

The attack was first identified by Hold Security LLC, an American cyber security firm in Milwaukee monitoring underground cyber-crime forums in search of stolen information.

The firm’s researchers noticed a notorious Russian hacker known as ‘HASH’ and ‘Rev0lver’ attempting to sell access to the BBC server on December 25th, the company’s founder and chief information security officer, Alex Holden, was quoted in the British press as saying.

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