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from the INSecurities-exchange-commission dept.
The SEC has disclosed that its corporate filing system "Edgar" (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval) was hacked in 2016:
The top securities regulator in the United States said Wednesday night that its computer system had been hacked last year, giving the attackers private information that could have been exploited for trading. The disclosure, coming on the heels of a data breach at Equifax, the major consumer credit reporting firm, is likely to intensify concerns over potential computer vulnerabilities lurking among pillars of the American financial system.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said in a statement that it was still investigating the breach of its corporate filing system. The system, called Edgar, is used by companies to make legally required filings to the agency.
The agency said it learned in August that an incident detected last year "was exploited and resulted in access to nonpublic information." It said the security vulnerability used in the attack had been patched shortly after it was discovered. The hacking, it said, "may have provided the basis for illicit gain through trading."
Direct link to the SEC statement.
Also at Bloomberg.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @08:37AM (2 children)
Maybe some real crackers, not just script kiddies and phishermen, can do what political reform movements seem incapable of: completely exposing and up-ending the sham of central banking, fiat currency, and trading in phantom "equity".
It need not necessarily be destructive in itself. It just needs to sew enough unwanted transparency and uncertainty into the financial system that the investor class goes into a desperate cycle of financial cannibalism that no amount of PR gimmickry can save it.
We should be so lucky.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @12:53PM (1 child)
How is owning a portion of a real business with real assets such as real estate and factories "phantom "equity""? Common stocks traded on public exchanges are nothing more than partnerships in businesses. If you buy good businesses at reasonable prices and hold onto them for a while, you will get dividends or see an increase in asset value if the businesses decides to open more stores, factories, or whatever instead of pay out dividends. If you have a mutual fund, even if it is just an index fund, you are just pooling money with other investors and delegating the buying and selling to a fund manager based on the terms layed out in the prospectus, which has to be available to you. Most prospectuses can be found on the fund companies' web sites. You can even buy enough shares on public exchanges to have a controlling interest if you can afford it and the SEC/FTC allows it. How is owning a large enough company that has real assets and pays real dividends phantom equity? With a controlling interest you could even dissolve the company, sell off its assets and pocket the cash. Even one share out of a million shares that exist for a company, it gets you access to share holder meetings; if you are persuasive enough to convince other share holders, you can raise a voting item to change how the company operates as long as it is legal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @04:03PM
Simple. The dollars/pounds/euros/marks by which your fixed assets are valued and traded are backed by...wait for it...nothing!