Here’s some fresh insight from the New York Times into today’s high­ly effec­tive crim­i­nals:

Nine Charged in Insider Trading Case Tied to Hackers

Paul J. Fish­man, the Unit­ed States attor­ney for New Jer­sey, said that nine peo­ple were charged after steal­ing cor­po­rate news releas­es and using the infor­ma­tion to make over $100 mil­lion.

From their sub­ur­ban homes in the Unit­ed States, dozens of rogue stock traders would send over­seas hack­ers a shop­ping list of cor­po­rate news releas­es they want­ed to get a sneak peek at before they were made pub­lic. The hack­ers, work­ing from Ukraine, would then deliv­er how-to videos by email with instruc­tions for gain­ing access to the pil­fered earn­ings releas­es.

Why did­n’t the press release ser­vices know their cus­tomer’s sen­si­tive data was being stolen from inside their net­works for years? Because, unlike ama­teurs on a wild hack­ing spree, these cyber attack­ers took great care not to be seen by their vic­tims. That means they were fund­ed well enough to be thor­ough and patient over a long peri­od of time.

These are the habits of today’s high­ly effec­tive crim­i­nals.