EU halts carbon trading after 'concerted' hack attacks
€30m up in smoke
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The European Commission has temporarily halted trading of carbon emissions credits following revelations that some two-million allowances worth about €30m were stolen from insecure accounts in recent days.
At least three of the “cyber attacks” have occurred since the beginning of the year, and other registries are known to be vulnerable, EC officials said in a FAQ posted on Friday. The Associated Press said national systems in five countries – including Austria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, and Poland – “each fell victim to 'concerted' online thievery over five days this week.”
Trading is scheduled to resume on Wednesday, but only if vulnerable countries secure their registries. Among the measures required, Bloomberg News reported, is the adoption of multi-factor authentication for account access rather than the simple use of a user name and password as is the case at many sites now.
The EC sets a limit on the total amount of carbon that can be spewed into the environment, and then allows polluters to buy and sell emission credits. Factories that emit less can sell allowances to those that emit more. The cap and trade system is the source of intense criticism from both environmentalists and pro-business groups, so it's not clear who is behind the attacks. While each ton of credit is worth about €2m apiece, each certificate comes with its own serial number, so it's not clear if a thief would be able to profit by reselling the stolen credits.
The EC didn't say how the registries were breached. Phishing emails that attempt to swindle registry-account passwords date back to at least July and resulted in the theft of 250,000 carbon permits worth over €3m. EU climate exchange ECX.eu has also come under defacement attacks by what's believed to be green-hat hackers opposed to the system.
The Czech registry compromised this week was planning to upgrade its security on Wednesday, but had to postpone the move after discovering the missing credits. About one million permits belonging to multiple companies were stolen from that exchange, Bloomberg said. Some 475,000 of them belonged to Blackstone Global Ventures and were transferred to accounts in Poland, Estonia, and Lichtenstein.
In November, an exchange in Romania was also compromised, the EC said. ®
COMMENTS
Another scam
Carbon trading has always seemed like a huge con.
Just another financial product to make money form and absolutley bugger all to do with anything environmental - just plain mental.
Seriously, why do people actually pay money?
When you can get your indulgence for free at http://www.freecarbonoffsets.com. I ordered a couple of life time supply of Carbon Credit just the other day to make me feel better.
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