Feds charge nine hackers for $30M insider trading scheme
The Wall Street Journal reports that federal prosecutors are set to unseal charges Tuesday against nine hackers and stock traders involved in an insider trading operation that netted more than $30 million on illicit deals. The group to be charged allegedly had been conducting sophisticated cyber-attacks against newswire services in order to steal upcoming merger and acquisition information that had been uploaded to the newswire's servers -- but not yet published -- and position their investments accordingly. The group was discovered after a multi-agency investigation involving the DHS, FBI, SEC and the Secret Service.
Authorities believe it to be the largest scheme of its kind discovered to date and part of a growing trend. Last winter, internet security firm, FireEye, warned the FBI about the activities of FIN4, a separate group of hackers that appear to only target specific pieces of information that could be used to gain various market advantages. "FIN4 is the first time we are seeing a group of very sophisticated attackers actually systematically acquire information that only has true value to a criminal when used in relation to the stock market," Dan McWhorter, FireEye's vice president of threat intelligence, told the FBI.
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