How hackers made $100+ million using stolen press releases

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by guru, Aug 24, 2018.

  1. guru

    guru

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/22/...-wire-hack-stolen-press-release-fraud-ukraine

    "
    At a Kiev nightclub in the spring of 2012, 24-year-old Ivan Turchynov made a fateful drunken boast to some fellow hackers. For years, Turchynov said, he’d been hacking unpublished press releases from business newswires and selling them, via Moscow-based middlemen, to stock traders for a cut of the sizable profits.

    Oleksandr Ieremenko, one of the hackers at the club that night, had worked with Turchynov before and decided he wanted in on the scam. With his friend Vadym Iermolovych, he hacked Business Wire, stole Turchynov’s inside access to the site, and pushed the main Moscovite ringleader, known by the screen name eggPLC, to bring them in on the scheme. The hostile takeover meant Turchynov was forced to split his business. Now, there were three hackers in on the game.

    Newswires like Business Wire are clearinghouses for corporate information, holding press releases, regulatory announcements, and other market-moving information under strict embargo before sending it out to the world. Over a period of at least five years, three US newswires were hacked using a variety of methods from SQL injections and phishing emails to data-stealing malware and illicitly acquired login credentials. Traders who were active on US stock exchanges drew up shopping lists of company press releases and told the hackers when to expect them to hit the newswires. The hackers would then upload the stolen press releases to foreign servers for the traders to access in exchange for 40 percent of their profits, paid to various offshore bank accounts. Through interviews with sources involved with both the scheme and the investigation, chat logs, and court documents, The Verge has traced the evolution of what law enforcement would later call one of the largest securities fraud cases in US history.


    The case exemplifies the way insider trading has been quietly revolutionized by the internet. Traders no longer need someone inside a company to obtain inside information. Instead, they can turn to hackers, who can take their pick of security weaknesses: a large corporation or bank may have good in-house security, but the entities it works with — such as financial institutions, law firms, brokerages, smaller investment advisories, or, in this case, newswires — might not.


    As one person involved in the press release scheme pointed out, it doesn’t matter what level of security a company has, “you’ve always got the human factor: that one employee who will click on the phishing email or is happy to exchange their password for money.”

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    (full article at https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/22/...-wire-hack-stolen-press-release-fraud-ukraine)
     
    dealmaker, zdreg, luisHK and 2 others like this.
  2. d08

    d08

    How convenient to say "it doesn’t matter what level of security a company has". Maybe it's time to lock this information down properly and those who'd click on phishing e-mails wouldn't have clearance.
    Companies and employees need to be punished for being so lax about this, I'm not even blaming the black hats - those guys will do what they do, always.
     
    dealmaker and athlonmank8 like this.
  3. zdreg

    zdreg

    Last edited: Aug 24, 2018
  4. Cuddles

    Cuddles

    No honor among thieves I see
     
  5. zdreg

    zdreg

    the best thieves are those with" badges." are you familiar with civil forfeiture in the US?
    don't ever travel in a rural area with a large of wad of cash, unless you want to kiss it goodbye to the local police department.
     
    d08 likes this.
  6. Cuddles

    Cuddles

    Was struck down by SCOTUS recently. I started a thread about it.

    The law that worries me is the one protecting insider trading among congressmen
     
  7. zdreg

    zdreg

  8. JSOP

    JSOP

    Sounds like a movie for Hollywood.
     
    athlonmank8 likes this.
  9. zdreg

    zdreg

    get your facts straight
    you got your priorities all mixed up. it is obvious that you have no idea how much money is lost by US residents in civil forfeiture and how difficult it is to recover monies lost even if you are proven to be innocent or the case is never prosecuted.