The Department of Justice (DoJ) charged two Ukrainian hackers for their roles in “a large-scale, international conspiracy to hack into the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) computer systems and profit by trading on critical information they stole.” According to the DoJ, Artem Radchenko and Oleksandr Ieremenko were charged with securities fraud conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, computer fraud conspiracy, wire fraud, and computer fraud. The indictment alleges that the two men hacked into the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) system. The hackers then stole thousands of files, including earnings reports containing non-public and confidential information. The defendants and others then profited off that information by selling access to it and trading on the information before it was public knowledge. The SEC also filed a civil complaint on Tuesday charging Ieremenko, as well as other individuals and entities. To gain access, the hackers used multiple cyberattacks, including directory traversal attacks, phishing attacks, and infecting computers with malware.
