Hacking has taken a new dimension, with a report claiming that a new group has been targeting companies for insider information to profit via market trading.

FireEye, Inc. has released an intelligence report that details a financially motivated “threat group” that has been carrying out attacks against publicly traded companies in an attempt to game the markets.

The report “Hacking The Street? FIN4 Likely Playing the Market” provides details of a group with serious knowledge of certain industries and their practices. FireEye found that the group has been collecting information from nearly 100 publicly traded companies and their advisory firms, in an attempt to obtain insider information that would help them in trading.

Dan McWhorter, VP of Threat Intelligence for FireEye said in a statement that “advanced threat actors conducting attacks to play the stock market to their advantage has long been a worry but never truly seen in action.”

“FIN4 (as the group as been named) is the first time we are seeing a group of very sophisticated attackers actually systematically acquire information that only has true value to a criminal when used in relation to the stock market,” McWhorter explained.

If McWhorter’s statement sounds a little dry, it does get more interesting: “The group does not utilize malware, instead relying heavily on highly-targeted social engineering tactics and deep subject-matter expertise to deliver weaponized versions of legitimate corporate files. Specifically, FireEye found that since at least mid-2013, FIN4 has made product development, M&A strategies, legal issues, and purchasing processes of companies its target data points.”

Suggesting that the hacking goes as far as insider espionage, the report goes on to state that “FireEye researchers also found that while FIN4 has highly advanced techniques for breaking into an organization, they have security practices on the data they transmit. Stolen login credentials were shown to be transferred to FIN4 servers in plain text while the operators themselves use TOR to mask their locations and identities.”

Corporate security is already a demanding game, with the tactics used here it has possibly become a lot more difficult to regulate.

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