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Minister McCully’s emails hacked

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Wed, 15 Feb 2012 8:05a.m.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully (file)

Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully (file)

Potentially sensitive government emails may have been revealed when an international hacker group broke into Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully's email account.

Mr McCully's private Xtra account was hacked by the group, Anonymous, while he was overseas in April last year, Fairfax reports.

However, he said he did not believe there were any Cabinet papers or foreign cables among the emails in that account.

"Ninety-five percent of the stuff that comes through on that account when I am travelling is media stories ... then there's a bit of office administration stuff," Mr McCully said.

"We discovered it because people started sending out emails from my account."

He said the outgoing emails mainly made fun at his expense but would not reveal further details.

Mr McCully had informed Prime Minister John Key of the security breach, prompting an investigation by the Government Communications Security Bureau.

Mr Key has warned other MPs to be more careful.

He said he was not sure what information the hackers had accessed, adding "if it was really sensitive it would be out by now".

Anonymous has previously brought down New Zealand government websites in protest of copyright laws, along with hacking US government and company websites.

NZN

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Comments

15 Feb 2012 02:21p.m.

Gary wrote:

Interesting - an actual national security breach and yet no swat team, helicopters or anything else!! Must still be waiting for Uncle Sam to tell them what to do?

15 Feb 2012 09:43a.m.

Mike wrote:

next time don't use 'iserverogerdouglas' as your password :P

15 Feb 2012 08:31a.m.

Erm... wrote:

Using Xtra? Are you mad?? Might as well publish on-line!!