Online Stock Trading Has Serious Security Holes
It’s never been easier to trade stocks; just a few taps or clicks will do the trick. But most of the platforms that millions of market participants rely on to move their money suffer from cybersecurity shortcomings, new research warns. As if stocks weren’t risky enough already.
A new report from Alejandro Hernández, a security consultant at IOActive, found that nearly all of the 40 major online trading platforms he investigated had at least some form of vulnerability. While they range widely in severity and scope, the overall picture is of an industry that has not taken security measures proportional to the sensitive information involved. Hernández will present his research at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Thursday.
Hernández analyzed 16 desktop applications, 34 mobile apps, and 30 websites, comprising 40 trading platforms in all. That includes major legacy players like Fidelity and Charles Schwab, mobile-first upstarts like Robinhood, and less common names like Kraken and Poloniex. And while some companies, like Schwab and Merrill Edge, earned mostly high marks for their security hygiene, the overall picture seems bleak.
