Hong Kong police arrest man over DDoS attack on stock exchange

Police in Hong Kong have arrested a 29 year-old man in connection with the recent cyber attacks on the Hong Kong stock exchange which forced a key web site offline and led to the suspension of trading on several stocks, including HSBC and Cathay Pacific Airways.

The police explained in a brief statement issued on Friday that the Technology Crime Division of its Commercial Crime Bureau had arrested the suspect in the Kwun Tong area and seized "17 sets of computers", two mobile phones and five digital storage devices.

The man was arrested under suspicion of "access to computer with dishonest or criminal intent", which carries a maximum penalty of five years in jail.

In an unusual move, the police also urged heads of corporations to "do their best in enhancing the robustness of their IT systems" by improving security.

No doubt in reference to the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack which took down the key HKExnews web site for regulatory filings, the police said that ISPs should be contacted in any emergency to help increase bandwidth, filter traffic or anything else that could "minimise the overall impact on their system's service".

The DDoS attack forced the exchange to re-evaluate the way it distributes important trading information to relevant stakeholders.

Given the shaky economic climate, the attack could not have come at a worse time for the exchange, although the organisation was widely praised for the transparent way in which it dealt with the crisis.

Police in the US and UK continue to step up operations against cyber criminals and hacktivists, and it will be of some comfort to those in south east Asia that law enforcers there are pursuing a similar strategy.