Swiss Foreign Ministry gets hacked

HACKERS HAVE BROKEN INTO the Swiss Foreign Ministry in a data mining operation that has been described as "very professional".

Reports seem to suggest that the hack was cunningly disguised, although no one is saying what it was disguised as.

However it was spotted by Microsoft employees who were looking after the network and stopped it by pulling the plug out of the wall.

It is not clear what the hackers were looking for. The Swiss have been neutral since the late Middle Ages, although their army knives are pretty much universal.

The foreign ministry's network still does not have access to the world wide web but is otherwise functioning normally, according to reports.

Over the weekend the Swiss Finance Ministry and Interior Ministry computer systems also suffered some problems and it is not clear if these incidents were related.

The implication from the reports is that it was a foreign power spying on the Swiss, although quite why is anyone's guess. We would have thought the nation's national secrets were limited to fine watches, good chocolate, and cuckoo clocks. µ