Osaka-based brokerage IwaiCosmo Securities Co. announced on Oct. 20 that a cyberattack on its online trading system allowed unauthorized trades in customer accounts and the personal data leakage of nearly 5,000 people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The company and Tokyo-based Trade Works Co., which operates and maintains the system, disclosed the incident.<\/p>\n
Unauthorized orders were placed in seven customer accounts, with trades executed in five, IwaiCosmo said.<\/p>\n
An investigation also found that personal information on 4,975 people, including names and email addresses, had been exposed.<\/p>\n
Cybersecurity expert Masakatsu Morii, professor emeritus at Kobe University, said the incident appeared to be unlike typical data breaches.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have never heard of a case like this in Japan. It is an attack on a completely different level from the leakage of personal information,\u201d Morii said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf attackers were able to penetrate a brokerage firm\u2019s trading system, which is at the core of its operations, and carry out unauthorized transactions, that would represent a fundamentally different type of attack from those seen previously and is extremely concerning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The company said it had contacted affected customers and restored the accounts to their pre-trade status, leaving them with no losses.<\/p>\n
Trade Works said it detected the attack on Oct. 14 and immediately imposed access restrictions.<\/p>\n
The company said the trades were unrelated to the leaked data and that no online trading passwords or other credentials appeared to have been compromised.<\/p>\n
Morii said he was not aware of previous cases in Japan in which attackers infiltrated a financial institution\u2019s system and manipulated transactions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis time it involved a securities company, but it is the kind of incident that raises concerns that attackers could, in some cases, breach a bank\u2019s system and move funds under their control. It is difficult to say the possibility is zero,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The system remains in operation after security measures were strengthened to block unauthorized communications.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile continuing monitoring and inspections, we are working to determine the cause and prevent a recurrence,\u201d said a corporate planning official.<\/p>\n
Trade Works, which also provides online trading services for other financial institutions, said no similar incidents had been detected among its other clients as of Oct. 20.<\/p>\n
(This article was compiled from reports by Rui Hosomi, Ryo Sanada and Ken Sakakibara.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Osaka-based brokerage IwaiCosmo Securities Co. announced on Oct. 20 that a cyberattack on its online trading system allowed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8768,4,450,451,3471,8767,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-889826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-asahi-shimbun","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-japan","tag-national-report","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}