14 DAY TRIAL // Information has surfaced about a series of attacks from last year that targeted two high-profile law firms. Authorities suspect the hackers were after insider trading to use on the stock market, The Wall Street Journal reports.
According to reporters, the FBI investigation is looking into attacks against Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP and Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP, two of the most well-known US law firms, used by many companies in the Fortune 500 list, either for multi-billion dollar lawsuits or for various types of contract or merger negotiations.
Besides the actual cyber-attacks, the FBI's investigation has also focused on determining what kind of information might have been exposed, which can be considered insider trading.
At the moment, there are no exact details as to what the hackers accessed or stole, but law enforcement are sure they were after crucial information that they could use on the stock market.
Company's Law Firm = Company - High-Grade Firewall
Authorities say that other law firms were also breached and that attacks continued all through the year. At the start of the year, the FBI and various security vendors issued alerts to law firms on the increased threat of these types of attacks.
Last year, the US Department of Justice charged two Ukrainians with hacking into business newswire services Marketwired, PR Newswire and Business Wire. The duo stole information from the service, unreleased press releases, and used the information to make stock transactions of over $30 million / €27 million, gaining profits of over $100 million / €90 million.
While companies might have high-grade security services in place to prevent hacking, usually their business partners don't. Since a company's law firm also has access to the same amount of sensitive information the company does, but minus the powerful firewall, hackers have recently started targeting these weaker points.