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NEW YORK – Hackers poor into a Nasdaq assist that handles private communications for some 300 corporations, the consort said Saturday — the stylish danger exposed in the machine systems Wall Street depends on.

The intrusions did not affect Nasdaq's stock trading systems and no client accumulation was compromised, Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. said. Nasdaq is the maximal electronic securities trading mart in the U.S., with more than 2,800 traded companies.

A federal authorised told The Associated Press that the hackers poor into the assist repeatedly over more than a year. Investigators are disagreeable to refer the hackers, the authorised said. The motive is unknown. The authorised spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigating by the FBI and Secret Service is continuing.

The targeted service, Directors Desk, helps companies deal documents with directors between scheduled commission meetings. It also allows online discussions and Web conferencing within a board. Since commission directors hit admittance to aggregation at the maximal level of a company, sharp the assist could be of enthusiastic continuance for insider trading.

Nasdaq OMX spokesman Frank DeMaria said the Justice Department had requested that the consort ready silent most the intrusion until at small Feb. 14. However, The Wall Street Journal reportable the enquiry on its website late Friday, suasion Nasdaq to supply a grounds and inform its customers.

DeMaria said Nasdaq OMX perceived "suspicious files" during a lawful section construe on U.S. servers unconnected to its trading systems and observed that Directors Desk was potentially affected. It pulled in forensic firms and federal law enforcement for an investigation. They found no grounds that client aggregation was accessed by hackers.

Rich Mogull, an analyst and CEO with the section investigate concern Securosis, said Web-accessible services same Directors Desk are a prime target for hackers, and hit sometimes been a back door for systems that aren't direct adjoining to the Web. The proximity of files on the Directors Desk grouping and the verify that no client aggregation was compromised could indicate that hackers were able to get in but not complete their attack, he said.

Computer section experts hit daylong warned that some companies aren't doing enough to protect sensitive data, and recent events hit underlined the point. The secret-spilling methodicalness WikiLeaks has published private documents from banks in Switzerland and Iceland and claims to hit incriminating documents from a field U.S. bank, mayhap Bank of America.

In 1999, hackers infiltrated the websites of Nasdaq and the dweller Stock Exchange leaving taunting messages, but Nasdaq officials said then that there was no grounds the break-ins strained financial data.

Nasdaq OMX CEO Bob Greifeld said in a grounds that cyber attacks against corporations and government are constant and the consort is vigilant in maintaining security.

"We move to appraise and enhance our modern section controls to move to the ever increasing global cyber threat and move to devote comprehensive resources to boost bonded our systems," he said.

Some of the Wall Street's technological scares hit been unconnected to hackers. In June 2009, a machine flaw knocked discover trading in 242 stocks on the New royalty Stock Exchange for individual hours.

More recently, high-speed trading code precipitated a "flash crash" on May 6. One change worth $4.1 1000000000 touched soured a chain of events that ended with 30 stocks traded in the S&P 500 finger falling at small 10 proportionality within fivesome minutes. The modify shortly wiped discover $1 trillion in mart continuance as some stocks traded as baritone as a penny.

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Associated Press Writer Pete Yost contributed from Washington.

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