London Stock Exchange May Have Been Hacked Last Year

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Computerworld is reporting that the London Stock Exchange may have been hacked in August of last year as it prepared to switch its systems from Microsoft’s .Net platform to a Linux-based platform. It’s once again preparing to attempt the same switchover this month.

According to the article:

“There were major problems on the exchange on 24 August, when stock prices of five large companies collapsed. Most notably, BT shares lost £968 million, and the LSE was forced to halt trading for the day. The exchange blamed an incorrectly entered price on a large number of stock orders.

But the trading system was also thrown offline last November in what the LSE called ‘suspicious circumstances’. So far, the official explanation is human error, but it is understood that the police have been drawn into investigations.”

The London Stock Exchange had initially been using the Linux-based system on an anonymous “dark pool” trading platform called Turquoise but had planned to switch the system over to handle trading on cash markets as well.

That switchover got delayed back in November due to the aforementioned “suspicious circumstances” that took the Turquoise system offline for a couple of hours during trading, but it’s set to finally take place on February 14th after “full live dress rehearsal tests” on February 5th and 12th.

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