Singapore Brokerages Suffer Cyberattacks

Up to five trading houses were affected by the attack, which disrupted trading from 30 minutes to up to the whole morning session.

Several brokerage houses in Singapore were hit by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on October 24, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said on Wednesday, in response to media queries.

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.

MAS said the cyberattacks had «limited disruption» to trading activities as the brokerage houses activated their DDoS mitigation services. It issued an advisory to financial institutions after the attacks to alert them of the increased risk of DDoS activities.

The affected brokerages included Phillip Securities and Phillip Futures. We are constantly monitoring our IT infrastructure and network capabilities to facilitate a smooth trading environment for customers,» a PhillipCapital spokesman told the newspaper.