NASDAQ reports hackers broke into its servers

The NASDAQ stock exchange has called in investigators from the FBI after discovering it had become the target of hackers, but insists that “at no point” were its trading systems compromised.

Suspicious files were discovered on Directors Desk, a web-based application which, according to NASDAQ’s own press releases, “serves more than 10,000 directors representing more than 230 organizations worldwide, including many Fortune 500 companies”.

In a statement on its corporate website, NASDAQ says it removed the suspicious files (which one must assume were malware-related) immediately and that it has not found any evidence that customer information was accessed.

According to NASDAQ, the US Department of Justice requested that it not go public about the hacking while it continued its investigation. Specifically, they requested that the earliest that customers should be told should be…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.