Hackers’ $100 Million Insider Shop Sold Insider Data on Demand
As hacks go, it was pretty straightforward: the Ukraine-based hackers would identify the news-wire companies that were preparing embargoed news statements on corporate news, steal the drafts, find the relevant data and sell it 'on demand' to various traders. The Feds are keen to portray the group as highly sophisticated, but actually the technology used was very lightweight compared to what other APT groups are up to: page 55, Clause 221 of the attached Complaint sets out the basics of the 'highly technical' hack. The authorities are also on the track of what is thought to be a UK or US hacking group called Fin4 which appears to focus on accessing companies' servers for detailed insider information.
It was a symbiotic relationship that brought together the underbelly of Wall Street and the dark reaches of the online world.

From their suburban homes in the United States, dozens of rogue stock traders would send overseas hackers a shopping list of corporate news releases they wanted to get a sneak peek at before they were made public. The hackers, working from Ukraine, would then deliver how-to videos by email with instructions for gaining access to the pilfered earnings releases.

In all, 32 traders and hackers reaped more than $100 million in illegal proceeds in a sophisticated and brazen scheme that is the biggest to marry the wizardry of computer hacking to old-fashioned insider trading, according to court filings made public on Tuesday. One of the men, Vitaly Korchevsky, a hedge fund manager and former Morgan Stanley employee living in a Philadelphia suburb, made $17 million in illegal profits, the indictment said.

But the five-year scheme came undone Tuesday when federal prosecutors from Brooklyn and New Jersey, joined by regulators from the Securities and Exchange Commission and other law enforcement agencies, announced a series of arrests, the filing of indictments and a lawsuit against what the indictments described as a loose network of business confederates.