Ike
2/4/2006, 02:15 PM
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8679
Dmitry Shatsky, vice president of the Russian Trading System (RTS) said in a statement that a virus had infected a single computer used to test trading software that was connected to the internet. The entire network had to be temporarily shut down on Thursday as experts sought to isolate the infected machine and scanned others PCs for signs of infection.
Russian anti-virus company Kaspersky said sources had revealed that the infected machine was controlled remotely to launch a denial-of-service (DoS) attack against other systems on the trading network.
This involves bombarding a system with huge amounts of irrelevant information in an attempt to bring it down.
"This seems to have been a specific hack attempt," David Emm, senior technology consultant at Kaspersky, told New Scientist. But it remains unclear whether the motive for the attack was extortion or simply vandalism.
"While all the world was in a frenzy over the damp squib that was Nyxem, this attack infiltrated the RTS and could have potentially given hackers access to their systems," adds Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for computer-security firm Sophos. "A virus which can disrupt a stock exchange can have obvious financial consequences, as well as harm the important credibility of an institution in the public's eye."
Dmitry Shatsky, vice president of the Russian Trading System (RTS) said in a statement that a virus had infected a single computer used to test trading software that was connected to the internet. The entire network had to be temporarily shut down on Thursday as experts sought to isolate the infected machine and scanned others PCs for signs of infection.
Russian anti-virus company Kaspersky said sources had revealed that the infected machine was controlled remotely to launch a denial-of-service (DoS) attack against other systems on the trading network.
This involves bombarding a system with huge amounts of irrelevant information in an attempt to bring it down.
"This seems to have been a specific hack attempt," David Emm, senior technology consultant at Kaspersky, told New Scientist. But it remains unclear whether the motive for the attack was extortion or simply vandalism.
"While all the world was in a frenzy over the damp squib that was Nyxem, this attack infiltrated the RTS and could have potentially given hackers access to their systems," adds Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for computer-security firm Sophos. "A virus which can disrupt a stock exchange can have obvious financial consequences, as well as harm the important credibility of an institution in the public's eye."