Maybank Kim Eng, PhillipCapital Among DDoS Targets

Disruptions caused by the cyberattack on the trading houses lasted from 30 minutes to the whole morning session on October 24.

Maybank Kim Eng and PhillipCapital spokespersons have confirmed their brokerages were among those that faced disruptions last Thursday, when up to five trading houses were hit by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

The impact was minimal as we swiftly mitigated the attack. At no point was the security of our clients’ information, online trading or Web services compromised, a Maybank Kim Eng representative said.

PhillipCapital also confirmed that Phillip Securities and Phillip Futures were affected, but it took «immediate and appropriate actions» to limit the impact.

The newspaper cited unnamed sources saying that RHB Securities, which operated the RHBInvest platform, was also affected. The firm declined to comment.

A DDoS attack happens when the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system is flooded with unwanted traffic, making an online service or website unavailable.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) issued an advisory to financial institutions following the attacks to alert them of the increased risk of DDoS activities.