14 DAY TRIAL // The US Department of Justice charged two Ukrainians with hacking into business newswire services Marketwired, PR Newswire and Business Wire, stealing private information, and using it to trade stock on Wall Street.
Besides the two hackers, seven other people involved in exchanging the private information and making the stock market transactions were also indicted, while an SEC civil case was also brought up against the two and 30 other more defendants.
According to the investigation, the persons involved made stock transactions of over $30 million / €27 million, gaining profits of over $100 million / €90 million.
Hackers gained access to unreleased market information
The two Ukrainian hackers first broke into the database of the aforementioned newswires back in 2010, when it's said they stole around 150,000 press releases.
According to SecurityWeek, they also stole employee login credentials and infected the systems with malware.
This gave them easy access to the newswire services and allowed them to intercept official press releases from the time they were published on the newswire website up to the moment they were officially announced.
This small window of time gave them insider information, which they then transmitted to their partners in Russia, Ukraine, Malta, Cyprus, France, and USA.
According to The New York Times, from all the news releases they managed to steal, only 800 contained useful information, which they ended up using in their stock market transactions.
The hackers provided instructional videos for their acolytes
To help their associates access, understand, and use the data, the two hackers even made instructional videos that they distributed to their partners in crime.
Companies like Bank of American, Caterpillar, Clorox, Honeywell and Panera Bread had their private information stolen on the aforementioned newswire sites.
The two hackers along with two of their Ukraine-based trading partners were arrested and are awaiting extradition to the US.