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Russian hackers break into Dow Jones, swipe secret trading information

Published Oct 16th, 2015 3:14PM EDT
Russian Hackers Dow Jones Hack

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In what can only be described as a major security lapse, it seems some hackers from Russia successfully broke into the servers of Dow Jones, Inc. and swiped some key secret trading data before it was made public. Bloomberg reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Secret Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission have been leading an investigation into the hack for at least a year now and it sounds like a very serious breach.

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“The breach is described by the people as far more serious than a lower-grade intrusion disclosed a week ago by Dow Jones,” Bloomberg reports.

It seems that the hackers swiped non-public data that affects future trades and either used it themselves to commit insider trading or sold it to other brokers who did the same.

Issues with technology have been cropping up more and more with American financial markets lately. Let’s recall that this past summer, trading at the New York Stock Exchange had to be halted due to something that was described as an internal technical issue while Dow Jones-owned newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal went down at the same time. Authorities also arrested some hackers operating in Ukraine this past summer for allegedly hacking into PRNewswire and swiping embargoed press releases that could be used to pull off insider trades.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.