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takyon writes:

The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York has unsealed an indictment of three Chinese hackers accused of targeting merger-advising law firms in order to conduct insider trading. According to the DA, the defendants bought shares of five companies before mergers were announced and sold them afterwards, resulting in profits of around $4 million. One of the defendants has been arrested in Hong Kong and faces extradition to the United States:

Law firms that advise on mergers once had to worry about a rogue employee trading on deal tips. Now, they have to worry about hackers doing the same.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have charged three Chinese citizens with making more than $4 million by trading on information they got by hacking into some of the top merger-advising law firms in New York. The three men targeted at least seven New York law firms to try to obtain information about deals in the works, according to an indictment unsealed on Tuesday.

The men were successful in hacking two firms, stealing emails of partners who work on mergers, prosecutors said. The three then bought shares of target companies, selling them after the deals were announced, prosecutors said.

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