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Overview

The World Health Organization-Gates Foundation Hack refers to the unauthorized posting of nearly 25,000 email addresses and passwords of employees of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), the Gates Foundation, the National Institute of Health, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and more. The digital attack, committed by unknown right-wing activists, have been spread on various extremist and terrorist channels on 4chan, Telegram and Twitter. The hack has been used to promote conspiracy theories about the coronavirus.

Background

On April 21st, 2020, Twitter^[1] user @17Karnage tweeted links to several Pastebin posts containing email addresses and passwords of employees at the World Health Organization, the World Bank, Wuhan Institute of Virology and more. Twitter has since deleted the tweet for violating the site's rules (shown below). They wrote, "Anons know what to do.. They have been hacked and exposed Make this go Viral ."

According to the Washington Post:^[2]

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, according to SITE’s report.

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.

Developments

Victims response

The National Institute of Health issued a statement on the data dump. They said:

We are always working to ensure optimal cyber safety and security for NIH and take appropriate action to address threats or concerns. We do not comment on specific cybersecurity matters, as such information could be used to undertake malicious activities.

The Gates Foundation has denied experiencing a data breach:

We are monitoring the situation in line with our data security practices. We don’t currently have an indication of a data breach at the foundation.

However, the World Health Organization did confirm the leak. They said:

As a precaution, passwords have now been reset for the 457 users whose email addresses were exposed.

Online Reaction

The hack has since been used to promote conspiracy theories about the pandemic. That day, users on Twitter and 4chan began to spread unsubstantiated theories about the virus (examples below, left and right).

That day, Redditor ^[3] Sprinklys posted an article from Vice ^[4] entitled "Neo-Nazis Are Spreading a List of Emails and Passwords for Gates Foundation and WHO Employees" on the /r/worldnews subreddit. The post received more than 7,800 points (87% upvoted) and 800 comments.

According to Vice, however, the information on the list may be "an aggregation of previously-hacked usernames and passwords that was compiled from previous data breaches of various companies."

Rita Katz of SITE Intelligence, the independent terrorism watchdog that first discovered the hack told VICE:

Far-right extremists’ distribution of allegedly hacked data by organizations like WHO and the Gates Foundation is fitting to how they’ve targeted medical organizations and personnel amid the pandemic. Whether out of accelerationist or conspiratorial-minded motivations, white supremacists and Neo-Nazis have called to vandalize hospitals, intentionally infect medical workers, and beyond.

Search Interest

External References