James Bond exposed in Swiss bank blunder

Roger Moore, who played British secret agent James Bond in the 1970s and 1980s, has had his Swiss bank account details published on the web following an error by bankers Credit Suisse.

Moore and other customers had their secret Swiss bank account numbers and residential addresses exposed as they were included in details of 675 money transfers inadvertently published on the bank's website, according to the Swiss newspaper Blick.

Credit Suisse, Switzerland's second-largest bank, confirmed the report and said it had shut down a test website where the details appeared.

"We are investigating how exactly that could have happened and have closed down the page," said Credit Suisse spokesman Georg Soentgerath.

It is understood that the problem occurred when a Swiss agency that handles royalty payments sent the confidential data to Credit Suisse as a test of its transfer system, only for it to be published on the bank's internet banking website.

Matt Tomlinson, business development director at MIS Corporate Defence Systems, said: "I'm sure the back-end application involved was tested for network and transaction security, and passed those tests.

"However, this type of testing doesn't allow for bugs which may occur when users have been authenticated and are using the application."

Tomlinson, who has previously worked with UK banks in developing internet banking systems, also told vnunet.com that the breach could have been much worse.

"Credit Suisse may actually have got off very lightly," he said.

"Potentially, someone with malicious intent could have gained access to its system through exploiting the faults that allowed the information to be published on the web. Account details could have been not just published, but altered."

German pop star Udo Juergens, one of the stars affected, told Blick: "This is a first-class scandal. How can I feel secure at such an institution?"