[ISN] SEC: Hacker Manipulated Stock Prices

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:19:56 -0600 (CST)
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.

[...]


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Received on Tue Mar 16 2010 - 23:19:56 PDT

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