WASHINGTON — It took only about five minutes for the market to tank and rebound after a group hacked the Associated Press’ Twitter feed to put out bogus information — and now the feds are taking a longer look to find out who got rich during the chaos.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have each opened investigations into the hack that falsely reported “explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured” and briefly wiped away $136 billion in market value.
Sources in and out of government say investigators will sort through the big financial winners and not just conduct a standard review of a market swing.
“We’re looking at who was trading right before and right after that,” Bart Chilton, a member of the CFTC, told The Post. “This is a full-fledged effort to look at this period of time to make sure that nothing nefarious in markets took place.”
In addition to the SEC and the CFTC, the FBI is investigating the attack. Security and financial experts predicted the National Security Agency and the State Department, along with the Department of Homeland Security, would open their own inquiries.
The secretive NSA didn’t confirm any role, saying that Homeland Security “has the lead to secure civilian information and communications systems for the executive branch.”
A group called the Syrian Electronic Army immediately took credit for the attack last week, although terror experts note the Syrians don’t have the most sophisticated cyber-warriors.
One line of particular interest for investigators is that of lightning-fast “cheetah” traders who conduct deals with high-speed computers and who were trading in the market when the attack occurred.