Hacking attack on Red Cross exposes data of 515,000 vulnerable people

Global headquarters forced to shut down computer systems for programme that reunites families separated by conflict

The International Committee of the Red Cross has been the victim of a cyber-attack in which hackers seized the data of more than 515,000 extremely vulnerable people, some of whom had fled conflicts.

A sophisticated cybersecurity attack against computer servers hosting information held by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was detected this week," it said in a statement.