Bursa Malaysia said last night that losses from unauthorised access and trading activities for some accounts had been identified and contained.
In a statement, it said steps had also been taken to prevent a recurrence of such incidents, which involved the online client trading accounts of a small number of brokers.
It said it had initiated discussions with the affected brokers on how to manage the unauthorised trades.
“In the interim, Bursa Malaysia has issued a directive to the relevant brokers in which the affected securities and proceeds will be retained for a period of 14 days or such time as necessary, to facilitate investigations,” it said.
It also said that the unauthorised trades were confined to Bina Puri Holdings Bhd and Bina Puri-Warrant B.
“A forensic audit of the relevant parties will commence to investigate the root cause of the incident and determine how the breaches occurred,” it said.
On Thursday, several brokers reported to Bursa Malaysia and the Securities Commission Malaysia that they had detected unauthorised access and trading activities for some online trading accounts. A similar but smaller-scale incident occurred about six weeks ago.
Similar hacking incidents have been reported in Japan in recent months, where online brokerage accounts were compromised and used to manipulate penny stocks globally.
The hijacked accounts were used to purchase stocks at inflated prices, allowing those who had acquired positions earlier to sell at artificially high prices.
Thursday’s incident led to a sharp drop in the shares of Bina Puri Holdings Bhd and Pos Malaysia Bhd.
