Some of the biggest law firms on Wall Street are scrambling to shore up their defences against cyber attacks, in the wake of a raid by Chinese hackers which led to millions of dollars of profits from insider trading.
Preet Bharara, US attorney for the southern district of New York, this week charged three individuals who he said infiltrated law firms over a period of about 18 months by hacking in to networks and servers.
Once inside, the gang targeted the email accounts of senior partners who worked on mergers and acquisitions. They then bought stock in at least five publicly traded companies which were the target of deals, netting profits of about $4m once the transactions were announced.