Neo Nazis are attempting to use 25,000 purportedly hacked email addresses and passwords to harass members of the World Health Organization, the US National Institutes of Health, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists use the data for harassment campaigns.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been a dramatic increase in hacking attempts on international bodies. The data was said to have been stolen by unknown hackers and spread online in recent days by far-Right extremists. The WHO had warned in February that cyber criminals were posing as officials from the organization in a bid to steal money and information.

SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks the online activity of white supremacist and such other groups, said the information circulated online on Sunday and Monday but has not verified if it is genuine.

Targeted organizations include: World Bank Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Gates Foundation National Institutes of Health World Health Organization US Centre for Disease Control

The WHO said 6,835 email addresses were made public online on Tuesday. The WHO cybersecurity team ran a verification program to check the exposed email addresses and passwords. As a precaution, passwords have now been reset for the 457 users whose email addresses were exposed.

There had been a two-fold increase in cyber attacks and thousands of World Health Organization email addresses have been hacked. SITE, the online terror monitoring organization reported.

The Gates Foundation has not relied to a request for comment. SITE head Rita Katz said that Neo Nazi groups had posted the information to 4Chan, a prominent online messaging board.

In the United Arab Emirates, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority said there had been an 11 per cent rise in cyber attacks in March.Several global businesses have warned staff not to use programs such as internet calling service Zoom. Google has banned staff from using the calling service and Singapore stopped teachers using the system.

Major international organizations are regularly targeted by hackers. Anyhow, at these times of covid-19 crisis, the cyber attack attempts have increased dramatically.