“How Russian Hackers Stole the Nasdaq”

There’s a fascinating article at BloombergBusinessWeek by Michael Riley titled “How Russian Hackers Stole the Nasdaq.” Here’s a sample:

Whoever hit Nasdaq had done similar prep work and had similar resources. The clincher was the hackers’ malware pulled from Nasdaq’s computer banks. The NSA had seen a version before, designed and built by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), that country’s main spy agency. And it was more than spyware: Although the tool could be used to steal data, it also had a function designed to create widespread disruption within a computer network. The NSA believed it might be capable of wiping out the entire exchange.

In early January, the NSA presented its conclusions to top national security officials: Elite Russian hackers had breached the stock exchange and inserted a digital bomb. The best case was that the hackers had packed their malware with a destruction module in case they were detected and needed to create havoc in Nasdaq computer banks to throw off their pursuers. The worst case was that creating havoc was their intention. President Obama was briefed on the findings.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by on July 17th, 2014 at 10:09 am


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