Macau Resident Held For Hacking, Insider Trading Charges In US
Iat Hong and two others allegedly breached computers of major US law firms and stole confidential exchange on M&A transactions.
Macau resident Iat Hong was recently arrested in his country on US charges that include conspiracy to commit hacking, security fraud, and insider trading along with two others, Bo Zheng (also of Macau) and Chin Hung (of China). The US Department of Justice (DoJ) unsealed a 13-count indictment against the three and has initiated extradition proceedings against Hong.
As per DoJ, using stolen credentials the defendants planted malware into their victims’ Web servers and successfully hacked the networks of two major New York law firms to steal confidential data from emails on forthcoming mergers and acquisitions (M&A) of clients. They then used the information to allegedly manipulate the market by trading in stocks which were expected to rally post-announcement of the transactions. In this manner, the three reportedly earned a profit of at least $4 million through insider trading.
The defendants also tried to breach computers of five other law firms, at some point making at least 100,000 intrusion attempts.
In addition, they launched a start-up robotics company and allegedly hacked the servers of two robotics firms to further business gains and stole information on product design and technology.
Read charge details here.
About the Author
You May Also Like
The State of Attack Surface Management (ASM), Featuring Forrester
Nov 15, 2024Applying the Principle of Least Privilege to the Cloud
Nov 18, 2024The Right Way to Use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Incident Response
Nov 20, 2024Safeguarding GitHub Data to Fuel Web Innovation
Nov 21, 2024