Tokyo: More than 6,300 accounts were hijacked across nine brokerage firms that enabled unauthorised trades totalling over 300 billion Japanese yen (approximately US$2 billion) in Japan between January and April this year, according to a new investigative report by Solidus Labs. (US$1=RM4.23)
According to BERNAMA News Agency, similar patterns are now emerging in the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other major markets. Regulatory bodies such as the US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) have issued guidance and briefings. They highlight Account Takeovers (ATOs) as a critical threat vector and urge firms to enhance detection capabilities.
“We are seeing attackers use phishing, deepfakes, and adversary-in-the-middle techniques not just to defraud accounts, but to move markets. Combatting this threat requires a holistic, intelligence-led approach that unifies cybersecurity, compliance, and tra
de surveillance within a single, risk-based framework,” said Solidus Labs Vice President of Client Solutions and Head of Investigations, Spyridon Antonopoulos in a statement.
The report titled ‘Account Takeover Meets Market Abuse: The Rise of Cyber-Enabled Financial Crime’ details how compromised retail accounts are being hijacked and weaponised for market manipulation. It highlights how these actions bypass siloed cybersecurity, fraud, and legacy surveillance systems.
It demonstrates how legacy compliance, fraud monitoring, and trade surveillance systems, each siloed in narrow risk categories, lack the integrated approach necessary to detect ATO-driven manipulation in time to take effective action.
To stay ahead, financial institutions must adopt a surveillance architecture that enables consistent oversight across jurisdictions, markets, and client types; detects anomalous login behaviour and session hijacks; and correlates suspicious trade activity across potentially compromised accounts.
Solidus Labs’
HALO platform provides a unified view of risk by integrating multi-dimensional signals that are traditionally siloed across surveillance, cybersecurity, and fraud teams, such as transactional behaviour, cybersecurity telemetry, and real-time order book dynamics. This intelligence is processed via a risk-based, agentic artificial intelligence architecture purpose-built to detect cyber-enabled financial crime and market manipulation. Powered by bespoke detection algorithms, HALO reduces alert fatigue, accelerates investigations, and helps safeguard brokers’ reputations and bottom lines.