[ISN] Virus floors Russian stock exchange

[InfoSec News]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/03/virus_hits_stock_exchange/

By John Leyden
3rd February 2006 

A computer virus succeeded in bringing down the main Russian stock
exchange on Thursday. The Russian Trading System (RTS) was forced to
suspend operations in its three markets between 1315 and 1420 GMT
after unnamed malware infected systems. Viral infection resulted in a
huge upsurge of outgoing traffic, interrupting normal network
operations.

"The virus got into a computer connected to a test trading system from
the internet," RTS vice president Dmitry Shatsky said in the statement
issued Friday, Reuters reports. "The infected computer started
generating huge volumes of parasitic traffic, which overloaded the
RTS's support routers. The result was that normal traffic - data going
in to and out of the trading system - was not processed."

RTS has since resumed trading. The exchange is playing down concerns
that sensitive systems and data might have been exposed by the attack.  
The attack on the Russian financial system came the day before the
widespread Kama Sutra worm began destroying files on infected systems.  
The effects of the worm were far less than first feared, but the
malware did force Milan city hall to turn off 10,000 computers as a
precaution after discovering its systems were riddled with infection
on Thursday, and deciding there wasn't enough time to mount an
effective clean-up operation, AP reports. ®