Dow Jones Hacked by Russians for Obtaining Trading Tips — No one knows how much money the made.
A group of Russian hackers infiltrated the servers of Dow Jones & Co., owner of the Wall Street Journal and several other news publications, and stole information to trade on before it became public, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Reports from Bloomberg suggest that Russia-based hackers stole stock tips from Dow Jones by performing a cyber-attack a year ago where the objective of the attack seems to be obtaining market-moving information prior to its publishing.
For instance, getting to read an article about the M&A negotiations before anyone else around the world does would help a trader buy a stock before any price hike.
This definitely is a crucial but illegal advantage.
There is no proof available yet regarding if the Russian hacker group actually benefitted or made money from this theft.
Sources suggest that: “The FBI and SEC have spent months trying to determine exactly how the hackers could profit from what they took,” according to Bloomberg.
Dow Jones, however, denied any know-how about this attack or the ongoing investigation.
Instead, The Wall Street Journal, as well as other finance-related publications owner, stated that it was possible that Bloomberg had fabricated the news just to make the opposing media outlet appear bad.
Dow Jones claimed that they are trying to find out “whether there is any truth whatsoever to this report by a competitor news organization.”
In the past, the Russian government was accused of targeting high-profile institutions in the United States, including the University of Virginia, personal data of over 334,000 Tax Payers at the IRS and “unclassified computer” at the White House.
The security officials in the United States also accused Russia and China of scanning the hacked data to haunt U.S. spies around the world.
