U.K. government agencies are examining whether a trading outage blamed on a software hiccup at the London Stock Exchange in August may actually have been caused by a cyberattack aimed at disrupting markets, according to people familiar with the matter.
A British intelligence agency has contacted the LSE in the past two months requesting additional information about the Aug. 16 outage, according to people familiar with the matter. The U.K.'s Treasury is also involved in the probe.
An LSE spokesperson denied that the incident was cybersecurity related, attributing it to a "technical software configuration issue following an upgrade of functionality." She added that the LSE "has thoroughly investigated the root cause of the issue to mitigate against any future incidents."
The incident, which delayed the market open by more than an hour and a half and was the worst outage in eight years, immediately triggered government cyber alert systems, according to the people familiar with the matter.
The U.K.'s Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ, which monitors critical national infrastructure, including major financial trading platforms, is examining if the software code may have played a role in the outage. Officials are looking at time stamps affiliated with the code's production, which could offer clues to its origin.
The status of the examination and whether any action will be taken by regulators or the LSE is unclear.
At the time, the London Stock Exchange Group, which operates the LSE, said a technical software issue had temporarily prevented trading in a range of securities, including stocks listed on the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250. It didn't specify the cause of the issue.
If the outage was caused by an attack, the aim may have been ..
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