Anonymous claimed that the website of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was breached in protest of arrests made at a climate change march in Paris on Sunday (29 November).

Personal details – including names, phone numbers, email addresses and passwords – of 1,415 officials were posted to a text-sharing site on Monday.

Delegates from the UK, US, India, China, Germany, France and dozens of other countries were hit by the attack on the UNFCCC website. Cybersecurity experts believe that the hackers exploited an SQL vulnerability to access the data, a relatively simple attack that is easily protected against.

"For the UNFCCC itself it's embarrassing," Oliver Farnan, security researcher at the Cyber Security Network in Oxford University, told The Guardian. "The specific attack that was used is a well-known vulnerability. To have their entire user database compromised in this way demonstrates a lack of focus on security."