Hong Kong Exchanges Denies Report of Printer Hacking Attack

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-14/hong-kong-exchanges-denies-report-of-printer-hacking-attack-1-.html

By Nick Gentle
Bloomberg.com
Aug 13, 2012

Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd. (BNWEXCH), the second-largest bourse 
operator by market value, said errors at a printer, not hackers, were 
behind the erroneous filing of three documents under the wrong 
companies’ tickers on Sunday.

Lijun International Pharmaceutical Holding Ltd. (2005) and Natural Dairy 
N.Z. Holdings Ltd. remained suspended today after the error, which saw 
Lijun’s first-half financial data wrongly released and documents 
relating to a takeover of G-Prop Holdings Ltd. (286) published under 
Natural Dairy’s ticker. A printing firm hired by the companies uploaded 
the wrong information by mistake, the bourse’s head of corporate 
communications Henry Law said, denying a report in the South China 
Morning Post that hackers were suspected.

Exchanges and their trading systems are under scrutiny globally after 
computer errors halted transactions on parts of the Tokyo Stock Exchange 
twice this year and after an automatic- trading malfunction drove Knight 
Capital Group to the brink of bankruptcy. Hong Kong Exchanges suffered 
two days of attacks on its website by hackers almost exactly one year 
before Sunday’s error.

“The issue was not with our system, there were mistakes made at the 
printer,” Law said by phone. “The issue is one of internal control at 
the printers and at the listed companies who have to authorize 
publication of the documents.”

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