The Ultimate Hack – HFT Hedge Fund's Trades "Slowed Down" By Malicious Malware

UPDATE: Sure enough, this was serious! *FBI, N.Y. POLICE ANNOUNCE FINANCIAL CYBER CRIMES TASK FORCE

Hacking Target… or The Pentagon… or Alcoa… or some Chinese military installation is all well and good; but mess with the US equity markets’ mainstay market structure and it’s getting serious. As BAE Systems reports, hackers slowed down high-speed trading at a large hedge fund last year and rerouted information about the company’s trades to offsite computers. The cyber-attack targeted the hedge fund’s trade order entry system and added gaps to the company’s trading algorithm – delaying orders by milliseconds. The hack went undetected for 8 weeks. Though the hedge fund was not named, it is believed that ‘organized crime’ is behind the hack – ironic really…

As Bloomberg reports,

Hackers rerouted information about a hedge fund’s high-speed trades last year to offsite computers, a security official with BAE Systems Plc said.

The hackers sought out monetary gain, targeting the hedge fund’s trade order entry system and adding gaps to the company’s trading algorithm, Paul Henninger, global product director at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, said in an interview.

The attack slowed down high-speed trading at the hedge fund, which BAE wouldn’t name.

“This is the first time we’ve seen criminals actively go after a business system and effectively take over that system and create sabotage,” said Paul Henninger, global product director for BAE Systems Applied Intelligence.

The attack was going on for eight weeks and BAE was called in by the company at the end of 2013, Henninger said.

“It has all the signatures of an organized crime attack,” he said.