Hacking Law Firms to Obtain Inside Information
Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of
New York, announced the indictment of three Chinese
defendants for hacking law firms. The defendants obtained inside
information, which they "exfiltrated from the networks and
servers of multiple prominent U.S.-based international law firms
with offices in New York." According to Bharara, "[t]he
defendants targeted at least seven law firms as well as other
entities in an effort to unlawfully obtain valuable confidential
and proprietary information," which they then used to make
securities trades ahead of planned, but secret, mergers. The
defendants obtained access to the firms by "using the
unlawfully obtained credentials of a [firm] employee." They
then "caused malware to be installed" on the firm's
Web server, which contained e-mails of firm employees and partners.
In several instances, the firm's partners were privy to the
confidential potential mergers.
