- Jul 22, 2014
- 2,525
Yesterday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — the US government agency that regulates the financial sector — admitted in a statement that hackers breached one of its systems.
According to SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, hackers infiltrated the SEC's EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval) system, a database holding information on official company filings, future announcements, or past financial records.
Clayton says hackers exploited a vulnerability in EDGAR's test filing component and managed to gain access to EDGAR's backend.
This granted attackers access to past documents, which are all public anyway, but also to private filings regarding mergers, acquisitions, or other market-moving press releases that have not been made public yet, and which companies submit to the SEC in advance of important market transactions.
Breach detected in May 2017, disclosed this week
According to SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, hackers infiltrated the SEC's EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval) system, a database holding information on official company filings, future announcements, or past financial records.
Clayton says hackers exploited a vulnerability in EDGAR's test filing component and managed to gain access to EDGAR's backend.
This granted attackers access to past documents, which are all public anyway, but also to private filings regarding mergers, acquisitions, or other market-moving press releases that have not been made public yet, and which companies submit to the SEC in advance of important market transactions.
Breach detected in May 2017, disclosed this week
