Russian Hackers of Dow Jones Said to Have Sought Trading Tips

The hack investigation shows how quickly law enforcers are shifting to a new front in insider trading: cyberspace. Market-moving, nonpublic information used to trade hands in secret meetings. Hackers are now stealing sensitive information and selling it to traders. This new vulnerability in the financial markets is challenging law-enforcement officials who are trying to keep pace with cyber-criminals' rapidly evolving moneymaking schemes.

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.

Hacking for Tips

In August, federal authorities made several arrests in what they called a years-long scheme that fused insider trading and hacking. In that matter, Russian-speaking hackers working from Ukraine were indicted along with traders for siphoning more than 150,000 press releases, including corporate earnings containing data that could be used to anticipate stock market moves, prosecutors said.

Those hackers broke into the servers of PRNewswire Association LLC, Marketwired and Business Wire, a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., over a five-year period, according to prosecutors. The group allegedly made more than $100 million in trades using unreleased earnings releases of companies such as Panera Bread Co., Boeing Co., Caterpillar Inc. and Oracle Corp., through retail brokerage accounts.

Information companies are regularly bombarded by hackers. When he disclosed the customer-data breach on Oct. 9, Dow Jones Chief Executive Officer William Lewis said the incursion was part of a "broader campaign involving a number of other victim companies." Dow Jones learned of the hack from law enforcement officials, Lewis wrote, saying it had determined its system was breached at times between August 2012 to July 2015 by hackers whose goal appeared to be gathering contact information for customers so it could send them fraudulent solicitations. The company said it had no direct evidence that information was stolen.