Russian hackers targeted ABC, information security analyst says The ABC was hacked after airing an interview with Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders. THE ABC is investigating claims that one of its websites was hacked by Russian cybercriminals in 2011. Information security analyst Patrick Gray first published the claim on his blog, risky.biz, saying cybercrooks obtained information from an ABC database, including an encrypted staff password, around October 2011. An ABC spokesman told AAP today that the corporation is investigating the allegation. It comes after one of the ABC's program sites was hacked yesterday and the personal details of almost 50,000 users were published online. A European activist has claimed responsibility for the incident and said it was in retaliation for the ABC airing an interview with Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders on February 13, ahead of his Australian tour. Passwords, usernames and email addresses of 46,651 people who'd registered on an externally hosted site, relating to the 2010 ABC reality-style program Making Australia Happy, were posted online by the hacker, called Phr0zenmyst. Mr Gray believes two of the encrypted passwords revealed in yesterday's attack match two encrypted passwords posted on a Russian online cybercrime forum in 2011, and they also came from the Making Australia Happy site. He claims the information could have been used to perpetrate a more significant cyber attack on ABC IT infrastructure, although it appears no such breach took place. "I'd suggest that there's been multiple attackers who've actually gained access to this database," Mr Gray told the ABC's 7.30 program. I'd suggest criminally motivated attackers had access sometime in 2011, but now someone with political motivations has accessed that same database. An Australian researcher today said the identities of the ABC users whose information was hacked yesterday were ripe for the stealing. Sydney security researcher Troy Hunt has cracked more than half of the passwords that were hacked from the ABC's website yesterday. He called the ABC's encryption of users' passwords "woefully inadequate" in a blog post after he found he could access 53 per cent of the exposed hashed passwords in 45 seconds, Fairfax Media reported. Users who tried to access the URL that contained content relating to Making Australia Happy were asked to submit personal information about what made them happy. Users were warned not to provide their real name and were told their information (barring their username and password) would be displayed on a publicly available map of Australia. Other information users were asked to provide included a nickname, email address, password, age, gender, postcode and a description of things that made them happy. Their IP address and longitude and latitude were also stored. Once the password that protects all this information was cracked, all of the information became available, making the possibility of identity theft a lot more likely. The passwords are secured by an algorithm known as a "hash" which encrypts the password with a code. However not all hashes are secure and many can be cracked. The ABC told news.com.au that reports today that the breach had spread beyond the Making Australia Happy website were incorrect and that the ABC's servers were not affected by the hack. "Making Australia Happy is an external website and does not sit on the ABC Information Technology infrastructure," an ABC spokesperson told news.com.au. This means that the ABC's core servers and systems are not affected. The corporation today vowed to step up its cyber security arrangements. "The ABC is taking immediate steps to check all of our external websites that are developed and hosted outside of the ABC to asses security," ABC head of corporate communications Sally Cray said in a statement. The ongoing monitoring of our internal ABC systems continues in order to strengthen our defences against future cyber-attacks. The ABC is in touch with external security agencies to ensure we are doing everything possible to prevent further breaches. The corporation has written to all those affected by yesterday's breach, apologised and urged them to change their passwords. Federal privacy commissioner Timothy Pilgrim has said his office won't investigate yesterday's attack, saying the ABC's response was sufficient. with Claire Porter