Shares of Bina Puri Holdings Bhd and Pos Malaysia Bhd saw a sharp drop today after reports emerged that they were among several counters hit by a major hacking incident yesterday.
Construction group Bina Puri tumbled to an 18-month low, falling as much as 43% to 21.5 sen, triggering a suspension of its intraday short selling.
Its Bina Puri-Warrant B was even harder hit, plunging 62% or 30 sen to 18.5 sen.
Bina Puri was the most actively traded stock on Bursa Malaysia, with 48.8 million shares changing hands by the mid-day break.
The counter saw unusual trading activity yesterday, with 103.68 million shares traded. Its shares rose as high as 40 sen before closing at 37.5 sen. Bina Puri-Warrant B doubled to 60 sen before closing at 48.5 sen on high volumes yesterday.
Pos Malaysia fell as much as 10.3% to 26 sen today, with 11.6 million shares traded by the break.
Five Hong Kong structured warrants, reported to be affected by the hack, were among the top five actively traded warrants, with PW Hang Seng Index (MACQ) the most actively traded at 177.6 million warrants.
The Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) and Bursa reassured investors this morning that the “integrity of Malaysia’s capital market remains intact”, following reports of unauthorised access and trading activities for some trading accounts.
In a joint statement, the capital market regulators said they were investigating the breaches and would implement further necessary measures.
“Capital market regulators and brokers are on alert and remain vigilant, while working closely to ascertain the root cause of the incident,” they said.
They also advised brokers to immediately alert clients to reset their passwords and login credentials to enhance the security of their accounts.
Brokers should implement additional security measures such as multi-factor authentication and stricter password policies, they added.
Last night, several brokers reported to Bursa and SC 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.
