Online trading and banking giant Scottrade has admitted that hackers successfully accessed their systems, gaining access to certain information on up to 4.6 million clients.
The information accessed apparently includes just client names and street addresses. More sensitive data such as Social Security numbers and email addresses were not compromised.
Scottrade is one of the US’s largest online trading firms.
The more troubling part of Scottrade’s admission is that the hacking occurred nearly two years ago, in late 2013 to early 2014, but only came to Scottrade’s attention recently. And only via US federal law enforcement officials, who informed Scottrade of their findings as part of ongoing cybersecurity crimes investigations involving the theft of information from other financial services companies.
The Scottrade admission comes on the heels of a similar admission by US forex trading leader FXCM Inc (NYSE:FXCM), which on Thursday admitted that it was the victim of a successful hack, which saw client information compromised and even some wire transfers initiated, although FXCM did point out that all funds had been returned to the appropriate client accounts. FXCM shares dropped 8% that day.
More information of the Scottrade hack is available here.