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Anonymous Hackers Turned Stock Analysts Are Targeting US, Chinese Corporations (softpedia.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the act-of-sabotage dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A smaller group of Anonymous, called Anonymous Analytics, reached the conclusion that DDoSing is stupid and never fixes anything, so they decided to use their hacking skills and stock market knowledge to make a difference in another way. For the past years, the group has been compiling market reports on U.S. and Chinese companies and publishing their results. Their reports have been noticed by the stock market, who recently started to react to their findings. The most obvious case was of Chinese lottery machine maker REXLot. The hackers discovered that REXLot inflated its revenue and the amount of cash on its balance sheet, based on the amount of interest earned. "The group published its findings on June 24, 2015, and REXLot stock price plummeted from 0.485 Hong Kong dollar per share to 0.12, before trading was suspended [for ten months]. REXLot rejoined the market on April 18, 2016, this year, but even after submitting a 53-page report, the company stock fell again by 50 percent," reports Softpedia. Anonymous Analytics then published two more reports on the company, urging the market to sell, and two days later, Reuters reported that REXLot did not have enough cash to make due bond payments, which meant the company had to sell assets to repay bonds. Other companies on which the group published market reports include Qihoo 360 and Western Union.

5 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. all growed up now by turkeydance · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and following the money.

    1. Re:all growed up now by houstonbofh · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And being more effective as a result.

    2. Re:all growed up now by bloodhawk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is the inherent risk. Their ethical radars are somewhat wonky to say the least, how long before they use the tactic of releasing false information about a company they dislike simply to crash their share price or worse abuse it to make a small fortune themselves. If they stick to the truth fine, but I just don't see them not being tempted to abuse trust.

    3. Re:all growed up now by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How is this different from any other analytics group ? Anybody whose opinion can influence stock prices have the exact same incentive risks. Hell you think no politician has ever said something about a law knowing it would drive down a stock price and knowing the law was never going to be passed - just so he could buy some cheap stock and sell it at a profit later when the stock recovered from the scare ?

      Hell - you think any CEO whose company is the target of a major lawsuit and knows they are likely to lose (which he will know before anybody else since he knows if they are really guilty or not) will fail to short the stock and make more than the company is fined for ? Then buy it back at a discount after the fine. Part of why companies tend not to give a fuck about things like health and safety regulations is because actually being sued or charged with violating them have a good chance of making the CEO richer than he was before, it's only the shareholders who lose out and since they can't really prove anything...

      So they may have an incentive to start a false rumor to cash in on - so does anybody else who is in a position where large traders pay attention to what they say. It's a serious problem but it is decidedly not unique to them.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  2. well the free market is supposed to function by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    with perfect knowledge so the free market capitalists should be happy !