Hacking EDGAR and Getting Charged
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey
reported here it has charged two Ukrainian men
"for their roles in a large-scale, international conspiracy to
hack into the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC)
computer system and profit by trading on critical information they
stole." The SEC announced its own charges here. The two men were charged with securities
fraud conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, computer fraud conspiracy,
wire fraud and computer fraud. The scheme relates to their hacking
into the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and
Retrieval (EDGAR) system. That system is where companies file their
"annual and quarterly earnings reports containing
confidential, non-public, financial information, which publicly
traded companies are required to disclose to the SEC." While
the U.S. attorney's office charged only the two Ukrainian men,
the SEC's complaint charges that they along with seven
