Hackers Attempt To Breach NASDAQ

NASDAQ OMX Group, confirmed that their networks were repeatedly breached by ‎hackers. Though the trading platform withstood the attacks, the hackers were able to ‎infiltrate a service that allowed company top officials to share secure private information.‎

The hackers were targeting Directors Desk, a managed communication system designed ‎for private corporate boards. The company did not divulge the information to the public ‎as per the orders of the Department of Justice, which advised them to keep maintain secrecy till, ‎February 14, 2011 to facilitate the ongoing investigation. However, when the Wall Street ‎Journal broke the story on February 5, NASDAQ OMX authorities had no option but to ‎inform the media about the infringement.‎

Normal security monitoring systems had detected suspicious files on the US servers and ‎also detected that the Directors Desk was potentially affected. An investigation by ‎external forensic experts and US federal law enforcement authorities was immediately conducted. ‎The files were immediately removed to prevent any information being accessed by ‎hackers. The trading platform operates independently from web-related services like ‎Directors Desk. None of NASDAQ OMX’s operated or serviced trading platforms were ‎compromised.

NASDAQ OMX operated 22 exchanges which is controlled from their ‎main data centers located in New York, Stockholm and London, as well as from the other 50 ‎exchanges located across the globe.‎ Since 2009, Verizon was responsible for their data center operations, handling of normal ‎day to day operations and infrastructural responsibilities.‎