Russians hacked Dow Jones to get information for trading

A group of Russian hackers infiltrated the servers of Dow Jones & Co., owner of the Wall Street Journal and several other news publications, and stole information to trade on before it became public, reports Michael Riley, Jordan Robertson and Keri Geiger of Bloomberg News.

Riley, Robertson and Geiger write, “For would-be inside traders, business journalists and data providers are a rich target. Potentially market-moving scoops often develop in-house for days or weeks, promising intruders a long pre-publication window to mine information and execute trades. Data being held for public release at a specified time can also be a gold mine in markets where the profitably of a trade is determined in a fraction of a second.

“Dow Jones says in its annual report that its Factiva service provides global business content to about 1.1 million active users. ‘More than 4,000 sources make information available via Factiva on or before the date of publication by the source,’ according to the report. Dow Jones Newswires publishes more than 16,000 news items each day to financial professionals and investors.

“U.S. authorities are ramping up their pursuit of hackers after a series of high-profile attacks on corporations.”

Read more here.