HONG Kong Exchanges & Clearing, the world's biggest bourse operator by market value, yesterday faced a second day of attacks from hackers that slowed down its website for company news and disclosure. The bourse was targeted by a "sustained and systematic" denial of service attack on Wednesday and yesterday, CEO Charles Li said at a press briefing. While the exchange does not know who the hackers are, trading systems were not affected and the defence that is in place is working well, he said. Hong Kong Exchanges said it would introduce alternative ways of distributing information and move away from a centralised disclosure method that leaves the website and its backup system vulnerable. The bourse planned to place notices in newspapers telling people about scheduled corporate announcements, Mr Li said. "What happened on Wednesday tells us that while that system served a great, traditional purpose of protecting retail investors, that system brings risk to it because it's central," Mr Li said. "The changes will give us a greater flexibility of not having to suspend in a situation similar to yesterday." The exchange suspended trading of companies that published price- sensitive information - including on earnings and acquisitions - after noon to ensure that investors had equal access to statements, Mr Li said on Wednesday. Seven stocks including HSBC Holdings and Cathay Pacific Airways were halted. HSBC makes up 15% of Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index. The exchange's method of releasing news on a central website created fair and equal distribution of information, benefiting smaller investors, Mr Li said. Higher than normal traffic on its website led to the breakdown on Wednesday and the bourse would review its technology infrastructure, said Hong Kong Exchanges chairman Ronald Arculli before yesterday's press conference. "This has affected the creditability and trustworthiness of information at a very critical time," said Charles Mok, who heads the Hong Kong division of the Internet Society, an international standard-setting group. "The situation is very worrying because the hacking is targeted at the information disclosure mechanism." The hacking, from remote- controlled computers in different parts of the world, was sophisticated and came at a high frequency, taking time to filter and analyse, said chief technology officer Bill Chow. Previous attempts had used a common technique and were easy to block, he said. The technology crime division of the Hong Kong police was investigating, as was the Securities and Futures Commission. The website was disrupted yesterday as companies including Swire Pacific, Li & Fung and Wing Hang Bank reported earnings. The bourse joins companies from Sony to Citigroup and Nasdaq OMX Group that have been targeted by hackers. Shares of Hong Kong Exchanges dropped 3,3% to HK$136,50 ($17,50), more than three times the decline in the benchmark Hang Seng index. Sony, Japan's largest exporter of consumer electronics, estimated the attack that crippled its online services this year may cost the company ¥14bn ($183m). "Trust takes years to build, so one little incident is not enough to cause a lot of damage to the confidence in the exchange," said Jonas Kan, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Daiwa Securities Capital Markets. China was the target of 493000 cyber attacks last year, according to the National Computer Network Emergency Response Co-ordination Centre of China. About half the attacks originated from outside China. Bloomberg, Source: BusinessDay, Reference-Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
