ICANN or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers revealed on Tuesday that its system was compromised by unknown hackers.

ICANN employees were tricked by a phishing scam in late November that led to some of the organization's sensitive data being jeopardized, reported online magazine, Slate.

Like Us on Facebook

The non-profit agency said the hackers sent emails that seemed to originate from an "icann.org" domain. ICANN employees who clicked a link in the email were directed to a bogus page that led them to reveal their usernames and passwords.

"The attack resulted in the compromise of the email credentials of several ICANN staff members," ICANN said.

With the credentials they had in hand, hackers accessed some of ICANN's system, including the Centralized Zone Data System, ICANN GAC Wiki, ICANN Blog and ICANN WHOIS portal.

ICANN is unsure if other systems were harmed but said its IANA-related systems were not compromised

IANA or the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority is a department of ICANN that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System (DNS), media types and other Internet Protocol-related symbols and numbers. 

ICANN made security enhancements this year to limit unauthorized access to their computers. After the attack was discovered, ICANN added more security measures to strengthen its systems.

Based in Los Angeles, ICANN is a nonprofit organization responsible for the coordination of maintenance and methodology of several databases of unique identifiers related to the namespaces of the Internet. It ensures the network's stable and secure operation.

TagsICANN HAcked, ICANN HAcked, hacking, Hacked 2014, Phishing Attack