Two Estonian traders have been charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for hacking into the computer system of a business news service and stealing PR announcements before release. The SEC claims the hackers used the stolen information to make $7.8 million through illegal trading.

The SEC charged Lohmus Haavel & Viisemann with fraud for using a tool to crawl BusinessWire to find unpublished news releases. (Reuters story here.) Supposedly, employees within LHV used the information they found, though unavailable to the public in intent, to generate millions in profits.

Updated July 16, 2010 and originally published November 4, 2005. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the RSS feed or receive daily emails. Follow @flexo on Twitter and visit our Facebook page for more updates.

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About the author

Luke Landes, also known as Flexo, is the founder of Consumerism Commentary. He has been blogging and writing for the internet since 1995 and has been building online communities since 1991. Find out more about him and follow Flexo on Twitter. View all articles by Flexo.