A hacking assault on Wall Street has been emerging for nearly a year. Nathan Rousseau Smith (@FantasticMrNate) reports.
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The file photo taken in 2015 shows the seal of the US Securities and Exchange Commission outside the Regulator's headquarters in Washington, DC (Photo: Andrew Harnik, Andrew Harnik, PA)
The Securities and Exchange Commission was in the hot seat after admitting that the pirates had penetrated In his EDGAR electronic filing system last year, I think he could have been used to make money illegally on the stock market.
US Lawmakers were stung by the news on Wednesday of the SEC's sensitive business data breach – a disclosure that comes just two weeks after Equifax, one of three largest credit bureaus in the country, revealed that pirates could access
A Senate Banking Committee will seek answers Tuesday in Washington, while members, at an already scheduled hearing, will probably grilling SEC chairman Jay Clayton – who took the top SEC position in May
The violation involving Wall Street's highest cop can disrupt the "burglary" of market data, but what is not Equifax in terms of consumer exposure. However, the hacking that has allowed cyber criminals to lock themselves into the database of a government regulator filled with millions of corporate statements about profits, mergers and fingerprints incites hardly believe in the integrity of the market on which depend 401 (k) and retirement investments.
"Family investors will not feel comforted to know that the regulator protecting their investments has been hacked," says Joe Saluzzi, co-founder of Themis Trading and co-author Broken Markets ].
Members of the House of Representatives also say that they are looking for the facts. In an interview with USA TODAY, Congressman Bill Huizenga of Michigan, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Securities and Investment, said: "We must all deepen what it's happening here. "
What's troubling Huizenga is the fact that everyone knows that the SEC is a favored target of pirates," and obviously not enough attention to been given to securing "business data in its filing system. It was a victimless crime, robbery and market information like that that needs to be protected, "said Huizenga." Regulators need to be held at the same level as companies and (market players) that they regulate. "
But security experts say the financial payback for everyday Americans might not be as "This hacking is different from the Equifax or Target hacks," said Lev Lesohkin, executive vice president of CAST, a New York-based software intelligence company. Hackers (in SEC data theft) do not go after consumer data "that could be used to steal the identity of a person.
More : SEC unveils pirates penetrated EDGAR, profited in the c Commerce
For more information: Feds would investigate the sale of Equifax executives
It was not until August SEC learned that hackers were able to use their illegal activities to gain ill-gotten gains through trading in the market, said Clayton SEC in a statement posted on SEC website Wednesday
EDGAR. For the analysis and recovery of electronic data, is considered essential to the functioning of the SEC and the ability of investors to see the electronic filings of companies, brokerage companies and mutual funds. The SEC says that nearly 50 million documents are viewed by EDGAR during a typical day. It receives about 1.7 million deposits a year.
While most filings are made public immediately, those that require SEC feedback sometimes, such as quarterly and annual reports or documents relating to businesses about to sell to the public. the first time, are not. According to analysts, it is these types of non-public data that can be stolen and traded illegally by hackers.
The Lesohkin theory is that the SEC's attack was executed by sophisticated hackers. move data from the EDGAR system.
For example, hackers may have targeted what the SEC calls its Consolidated Audit Trail, or CAT.
CAT provides what equates to a digital commercial footprint, which facilitates "the effective tracking of trading activity" in the stock market, noted SEC Clayton in his statement
hacker discovered in a repository that, say, Warren Buffett was building a huge stake in a title unbeknownst to the market, a hacker could take advantage of this information by buying the stock before the rest of the market would discover it and it has gone up in price, says Saluzzi
This is not the first time that the SEC's EDGAR system is infiltrated by cyber-thieves. In May, the SEC filed fraud charges against a man who engineered to manipulate the Fitbit stock price by "making a fake regulatory deposit". Similarly, on May 15, 2015, a fake financial company filed a false statement with the SEC stating that it was buying the Avon cosmetics company for $ 18.75 per share, at a time when The stock traded at $ 6. Avon's shares climbed, and stocks were halted three times that day before the fraud was determined
US Senator Elizabeth Warren has begun an investigation into the massive violation of Equifax data. It will also introduce a bill to give consumers the opportunity to freeze their credit for free. Fred Katayama reports.
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