Moody's Junk Rating Earns Portuguese Hacker Attack

By James Lee Phillips

July 9, 2011 10:07 AM EDT

The stereotypical hacker is probably not considered to be overly nationalistic, but Moody's recent downgrade seems to have inspired considerable patriotism among Portuguese hackers -- to the point that they were motivated to hack into Moody's website and 'alter' a significant portion of the main page.

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The United States-based credit rating agency Moody's downgraded Portugal to junk status (i.e., unable to repay debts, unworthy of investment), after a bail-out agreement reached with the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank. Many in Portugal and across Europe have criticized the rating, which dropped the country's rating four notches at once and caused Portuguese and Spanish banks to subsequently lose share price as well.

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Within 24 hours, however, hackers had breached Moody's website and made a number of changes to Portugal's page.

The first was returning Portugal to investment-worthy status -- all the way to A++ in fact. "Moody's is proud to announce that Portugal is now ranked as an A++ country," the page read. If the hackers had stopped there, it might have escaped notice for a bit longer.

However, they also added some condemnatory language immediately thereafter. "Here at Moody's we are paid to say what our $ friends want, we are powerfull [sic]. We sell some hunches and everyone believes them. It's the mood of the day."

"Yet, we have trivial security vulnerabilities on our website," mocked the hackers, who certainly had seemed to require little time to breach the defenses of the Berkshire Hathaway-owned corporation's Internet portal. A photo of Portugal's first king, Afonso Henriques, was accompanied by the comment "Afonso ranked your website as Z--" and a less polite remark about the destination of the king's sword.

Moody's has been the subject of significant criticism, most especially since their perceived involvement in the economic downturn of the end of the first decade of the 21st Century. Allegations of the corporation wielding its ratings as 'blackmail' have been published in places such as the Washington Post, who wrote "many corporations, municipalities and foreign governments have grown wary of the big three credit-rating companies -- Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings -- as they have expanded into global powers without formal oversight."

James Lee Phillips is a Senior Writer & Research Analyst for IBG.com. With offices in Dallas, Las Vegas, and New York, & London, IBG is quickly becoming the leading expert in Internet Marketing, Local Search, SEO, Website Development and Reputation Management. More information can be found at http://www.ibg.com. Nationwide Biweekly Administration helps you pay off your mortgage loan 6-10 years early and save THOUSANDS in interest with their proven Interest Minimizer bi-weekly mortgage payment plan from Nationwide Biweekly Administration.

This article is contributed by IBG.com and does not represent the views or opinions of International Business Times.