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Copyright violations



-- Financial Times, 11/29/96

REUTERS STAFFER SABOTAGES HONG KONG BANK DEALING ROOMS

A computer operator at Reuters in Hong Kong recently sabotaged the
dealing room systems of five of the company's investment bank clients.
The attack crippled for up to 36 hours the computer systems delivering
market prices and news to traders at NatWest Markets, Jardine Fleming,
Standard Chartered and two other banks. The banks, which resorted to
alternative terminals such as Bloomberg, claimed the tampering had no
significant impact on trading and said neither they nor their clients
experienced losses as a result. The initial breach occurred on November
18. Reuters engineer Winston Cheng (now suspended) allegedly paid
maintenance visits to several clients and used his password to gain
access to the operating system at the heart of the Reuters networks. He
entered commands that would delete key operating system files after a
delay to allow him to leave the building. The first bank to report
problems at 6:00 P.M. was Standard Charter, followed by the others. The
dealing room systems were partially fixed by the morning to allow trading
to continue more or less as normal but it was not until the next day that
they were restored to full operation. As well as reviewing procedures on
staff, Reuters is considering restrictions on its maintenance engineers'
access to trading floors and the system software.