Trading stocks is exceptionally easy these days, you can literally make trades in seconds these days thanks to brokerages that allow their customers to access the market through trading platforms for computers and mobile devices. It’s all safe, generally, but this doesn’t mean there aren’t incidents where such brokerages are hit by hackers, that’s precisely what has happened with Scottrade, a firm that millions use to manage their investments in the market.
Scottrade confirmed through a brief statement on its website that it was hit with a cyberattack about two years back, it explained that federal law enforcement had informed the company of “illegal activity involving our network” that took place between late 2013 and early 2014.
Information on some 4.6 million users has been exposed, but the company promises that hackers were only able to gain access to contact information, and that the trading platform and client funds were not accessed. The company further adds that it has started notifying the nearly five million people whose information is believed to have been compromised in this cyberattack.
The company has not expanded much on this whole ordeal but a spokesman for Scottrade did tell security journalist Brian Krebs that the focus of this hack appears to have been list of client names and street addresses.
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