Questrade confirms it was subject to DDoS attack

Maria Nikolova

The problems emerged on Friday, with the company reporting a series of issues with its web servers.

Binarystation launches enterprise solution and provides source code to brokers

Disgruntled traders and a raft of complaints – this is what the team of Canadian brokerage Questrade has been facing since Friday, June 16, 2017, as its customers started reporting of the trading platforms being down and of problems logging in.

The first updates from the broker soon after the issues emerged said that the company was investigating an issue with its web servers. A couple of hours after the issue was supposed to be under control, problems re-emerged again. The Questrade team kept working to resolve the matter.

Late on Friday, the broker said connection was restored to its platforms apart from IQ Edge.

Today, it posted an update about what happened explaining the company was subject to a DDoS attack.

This is what the company said:

“We have completed our investigation and can confirm we were subjected to a DDoS attack Friday. To be clear, this was not a ‘hack’ and no personal information has been compromised. We have taken all available immediate steps to protect against similar future attacks.

We were unable to share more information during the attack, as doing so would reduce the effectiveness of some of our counter measures.

We apologize for the inconvenience this caused, and thank you for your understanding. “

The company’s platforms experienced similar outages earlier this year but today the broker explained that these were not the result of a DDoS attack. Such attacks often happen on Friday or during weekends, as cyber criminals abuse the fact that most staff are off for the weekend and the attack may go unnoticed.

Cyber security has been a serious issue for online trading companies and online payment services. It took more than two months and some serious financial resource for GMO Payment Gateway Inc (TYO:3769) to tackle the consequences of the data breach of two of its client websites. The work of both websites – one run by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and one run by the Japan Housing Finance Agency was halted on March 10, 2017, several hours after GMO Payment Gateway confirmed unauthorized access to the websites and heavy data leak. The credit card payment site for metropolitan tax operated by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government resumed its work on April 24, 2017. The credit card payment website of the Japan Housing Finance Agency re-opened on June 5, 2017.

Read this next

Digital Assets

USDC sees massive $10.4 billion outflows in March

Cryptocurrency traders have withdrawn more than $10 billion from the world’s second largest stablecoin, USDC, in less than three weeks even as concerns over the fallout from the Silicon Valley collapse have receded.

Interviews

OSTTRA’s Joanna Davies goes beyond 30-30-30 data standard at FIA Boca 2023

FinanceFeeds Editor-in-Chief Nikolai Isayev spoke with Joanna Davies about OSTTRA.

Interviews

CloudMargin’s Stuart Connolly on how to manage collateral amid high rates at FIA Boca 2023

FinanceFeeds Editor-in-Chief Nikolai Isayev spoke with Stuart Connolly about CloudMargin’s SaaS platform, said to be the only cloud-native collateral and margin management system in the industry, at a time of stress due to rising interest rates.

Interviews

Baton Systems’ Alex Knight on solving post-trade with DLT at FIA Boca 2023

FinanceFeeds Editor-in-Chief Nikolai Isayev spoke with Alex Knight about Baton Systems’ about rising settlement fails, collateral management, and the profile of DLT beyond cryptocurrencies.

Industry News

Wise claims 92% of banks hide or inflate FX fees despite Cross-Border Payments Regulation 2

“Banks continue to exploit loopholes in EU regulation to mislead their customers and overcharge them through fees hidden in inflated exchange rates.”

Industry News

Goliath Partners opens Miami headquarters to recruit C++ developers for fintech and trading

I’m extremely excited to be pursuing this venture and having the backing of such knowledgeable entrepreneurs who have seen success time and time again. We’ve already made brilliant headway working with leading investment houses and trading exchanges. It’s just the start, but we’re already making a huge difference with our work.”

Industry News

IOSCO calls for cooperation against cross-border scams, greenwashing, misconduct, and fraud

“Regulators need effective resources, practices, tools, and techniques to promote consumer protection and market integrity, which is supported through participation in critical multilateral forums such as IOSCO.”

Institutional FX

Archax rolls out tokenization engine as LawtechUK confirms legal standing of tokens

“As the UK’s first FCA regulated digital securities exchange, we are now building on this to pave the way to make traditional assets interoperate with Web 3.0.”

Technology

Broadridge migrates bond e-trading platform LTX to AWS

“LTX is committed to offering innovative e-trading technology that facilitates transparency and liquidity discovery. By migrating to AWS, LTX can leverage the scalability of the cloud to continue to deliver enhanced data and execution capabilities to our clients.”

<