The cyber-security measures put in place by the Federal Reserve recently came under the scanner; with a spokesman of the central bank acknowledging in a statement that hackers had gained access to the Federal Reserve website and had compromised a limited amount of data.

According to the statement made by the Federal Reserve spokesman, the central bank was aware that an outside party had obtained information by exploiting a temporary flaw in a website vendor product. The responsibility of the attack has been claimed by the Anonymous `hacktivist' group, which has targeted the US government in the past.

Meanwhile, without divulging any details about either the websites that had been compromised by the hackers, or the information that had been obtained by them, the spokesman said: "The exposure was fixed shortly after discovery and is no longer an issue."

As per a Reuters report, the Fed had - in an earlier-this-week notification to the bankers - revealed that a contact database, which has been essentially designed to facilitate communication between banks whenever a natural calamity strikes, had been compromised.

The notification, which had reportedly been sent through the Fed's Emergency Communication System, also cautioned that the information which the hackers had stolen and published included contact details like email addresses and phone numbers.