http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/manipulated-stock-prices/ By David Kravets Threat Level Wired.com March 16, 2010 U.S. regulators are moving to freeze the assets and trading accounts of a Russian accused of hacking into personal online portfolios and manipulating the price of dozens of stocks listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market and New York Stock Exchange. A New York federal judge on Tuesday sided with the Securities and Exchange Commission and froze the assets of Broco Investments, believed to be a one-trader operation based in St. Petersburg, Russia. The SEC said Broco capitalized by artificially moving prices of more 38 thinly traded securities - enabling Broco to profit from up-or-down price swings. "These transactions have created the appearance of legitimate trading activity and have artificially affected the prices of at least 38 issuers," (.pdf) the Securities and Exchange Commission said in court filing. The so-called "hack, pump and dump" scheme is among the latest illicit methods of gaming the market though hacking. An Indian man was sentenced to two years in prison for undertaking a similar scam in 2008. That same year, a Ukrainian hacked into Thomson Financial to get a peek about an upcoming negative earnings report for IMS Health, earning nearly $300,000 for a few minutes' work. [...] ___________________________________________________________ Register now for HITBSecConf2010 - Dubai, the premier deep-knowledge network security event in the GCC, featuring keynote speakers John Viega and Matt Watchinski! http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2010dxb/Received on Tue Mar 16 2010 - 23:19:56 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Tue Mar 16 2010 - 23:29:40 PDT