Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca has suffered a serious server hack leading to the leaking of 2.6TB of data relating to some of the most powerful people in the world.
The cache of 11.5 million leaked files is being referred to as "the Panama Papers" and was obtained from an anonymous source by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. It was then shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with the Guardian, BBC and other media outlets around the world.
Mossack Fonseca, the company the data originated from, is the fourth largest offshore law firm, according to The Guardian, and both it and the BBC claim the documents show the firm has "helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax".
For its part, Mossack Fonseca says it has operated beyond reproach for the past 40 years and has never been charged with any criminal wrongdoing.
At 2.6TB, this is the largest data leak of the past several years - bigger than either WikiLeaks in 2010 or the NSA files in 2013.
It also seems that the method of extracting data, and potentially therefore the person who leaked it, is different too.
While the 2010 and 2013 US military and intelligence leaks were carried out by insiders (Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden respectively), Mossack Fonseca is blaming this leak on an attack on its email servers, according to Spanish news site El Español.
The website quoted a statement from the company saying it had opened an investigation after discovering that "unfortunately" it had suffered "an attack on its email server" and that it is taking "all necessary measures to prevent this from happening again".
These include reinforcing its security systems and bringing in specialist consultants to determine exactly what information the "unauthorised persons" have accessed.
More information on the content of the Panama Papers and their potential implications can be found at The Guardian and the BBC.
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