Hong Kong Stock Exchange Website Hit By DoS Attacks

The Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited faced a day of tech hiccups, including the latest denial-of-service attacks on its website.

According to HKEX CEO, Charles Li Xiaojia, the bourse’s website was subject to distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) – a cyberattack whereby overwhelming traffic is imposed to slow or restrict access from other browsers – and was subsequently unable to display exchange prices and other financial data.

We will continue to invest more to safeguard and improve” the information and technical infrastructure at the exchange, Li said at a press conference. We hope the public has confidence in the robustness of our system.

The cyberattack was not the only tech hiccup the HKEX faced just in that single day. Earlier yesterday afternoon, the HKEX had to halt derivatives trading due to a bug in the system before resuming today. According to an update from its website, the issues were caused by software issues in the vendor-supplied trading system.»