Equifax exec's inside trade shame: Software boss sentenced for mega-hack stock profit

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/18/equifax_insider_trading/

By Iain Thomson
The Register
18 Oct 2018

An Equifax executive -- who knew the biz had been hacked before it was 
made public and banked over $75,000 in stock trades using this inside 
knowledge -- has avoided jail.

Sudhakar Reddy Bonthu, formerly a software product development manager for 
Equifax’s Global Consumer Services team, admitted to learning that hackers 
have made off with the personal records of 46 million people in August 
2017, and days later exploited that information in share trades.

The 44-year-old was sentenced by a US federal district court in Georgia 
this week to eight months of home confinement, fined $50,000, and made to 
give back his ill-gotten gains.

Bonthu, of Atlanta, had been asked to develop an online portal where 
people could check if their data had been swiped by miscreants from an 
unnamed company, but he figured out it was his employer that had been 
ransacked by cyber-crooks. He was told the announcement about the security 
breach would be made on September 6, and decided to see if he couldn't 
turn a quick buck from this insider info.

[...]

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