Management of NASDAQ Stock Exchange confirmed the fact of hackers penetration into Directors Desk service meant for exchanging the documents and confidential business correspondence between the companies placing their papers in NASDAQ: The Wall Street Journal reports.
The first warning about a possible inbreak into NASDAQ servers appeared on February 05, but the company’s representatives refused to make official comments on this information. However, the internal source of NASDAQ reported that hacking took place, but no harm was inflicted. He also drew a parallel with a thief’s visit who broke into house but did not take anything. The official confirmation was sounded on Monday morning.
The enquiry has not found the source of hackers attack yet, the motivation of penetrators is also still unclear. In accordance with one of versions, they were trying to take possession of confidential information which would give a competitive advantage during the trades. Another version says that the campaign with NASDAQ servers inbreak was directed to hurt reputation of the stock exchange in general. “For the last years several such incidents have been observed that was disrupting the investors confidence, and this case is some kind of it”, - Reuters quoting Tim Ghriskey, Solaris investment fund representative.
The attacked Directors Desk counts more than 10 000 users. NASDAQ notes that the trading net of the brokers' board was not covered. NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is the major electronic stock exchange in the USA and the second one in the world by the market capitalization size. The total volume of NASDAQ deals reached 954 billion dollars according to the November data 2010.
