The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) is looking into reports of suspected cyber attacks disrupting online trading at several local brokerages.
The regulator said it was assisting the stock exchange in investigating the disruption, a report by Nikkei Markets said on Friday.
This comes after several brokerages alerted clients that their online broking services had been disrupted by the suspected cyber attacks once again after a similar disruption on Wednesday.
Jupiter Securities Sdn Bhd was among the broking companies affected, and sent out an email to clients to update them of the situation.
An earlier notice from N2N Connect Bhd, which provides core trading solutions to local stock broking firms alerted brokers of a DDos Cyberattack threat on Wednesday.
“This morning July, 5 2017 we witnessed a coordinated cyberattack known as DDos (distributed denial-of-service) targeted at Malaysian brokers.
“It first started at one data centre at 8.30am until 10.30am and later the other centre was attacked. “This attack was aimed at broking houses.
“A further check with brokers not on our panel and confirmed they too experienced similar disruption at the said time,” it said in the notice.
It added that it was informed the affected brokers received blackmailing e-mail by an alleged cyber-group seeking payment to avert an attack that could crash their trading websites.
“If the ransom is not paid in the allotted time, the ransom would increase and the targets would face large scale and persistent multi-vector attacks,” it said.
Last month, it was reported that Japanese Forex broker Kabu.com Securities, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc also faced disruption following a DDoS attack.
The cyber attack targeted the website of the company, which became unavailable for about half an hour.
Source: The Star Online