The National Futures Association (NFA) has reported cyber attacks on their website tonight. As reported earlier on LeapRate, there have been cyber attacks today affecting many popular websites on an internet infrastructure provider that hosts a number of these major websites.
NFA relies on this internet infrastructure provider and its website has been affected by this attack.
NFA reported their website is still accessible through the following direct link: 198.153.131.79.
National Futures Association is the self-regulatory organization for the U.S. derivatives industry, including on-exchange traded futures, retail off-exchange foreign currency and OTC derivatives
Why should we care if NFA’s website goes down you may ask? Could this be a prelude to heavier attacks against financial exchanges, banks, brokers, and other critical infrastructure? Let’s hope not.
While no one knows 100% who is causing these outages, speculation is rampant, with many speculating that Russia is behind the massive cyber attacks.
This past week, the U.S. accused Russia of hacking aides close to Hillary Clinton in order to dump information to WikiLeaks to expose personal emails and the likes regarding the presidential election, the U.S. then threatened an appropriate cyber response.
If anything this reinforces the need for all to take security of their information seriously and make it a top priority. Moreover to guard against hacking and to have backups and mitigation plans in case of connection down times.