Hacking group Anonymous has posted information on 2,500 Monsanto employees and associates, and claimed credit for "crippling all three of their mail servers as well as taking down their main websites world-wide."
Monsanto, a U.S.-based global biotech seed company, Wednesday acknowledged the breach, saying it happened last month.
"Monsanto experienced a disruption to our websites which appeared to be organized by a cyber-group," said Tom Helscher, the company's director of corporate affairs, in an email to msnbc.com. "In addition, this group also recently published publicly available information on approximately 2,500 individuals involved in the broader global agriculture industry."
But, Helscher said contrary to initial reports, "only 10 percent of this publicly available information (was) related to Monsanto’s current and former employees. The list also included contact details for media outlets as well as other agricultural companies.
"Information on these attacks has been turned over to the appropriate authorities. We remain vigilant in protecting our information systems," he said.
Earlier this week, Anonymous posted online 90,000 military email addresses and passwords obtained from military consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.
