The New York Stock Exchange has received a credible cyber threat and is taking steps to beef up its security, Fox Business Network reports.
"We don’t comment on security matters. However, we take security-related issues very seriously," NYSE spokesman Richard Adamonis tells Fox Business Network.
At stake is the exchange's famous Big Board, the iconic image of shares trading hands.
Sources that described by Fox as familiar with the matter say the Big Board is “on alert for an attack” and has received "credible threats.”
The NYSE goes on alert “when there is a reasonable assumption of a large imminent threat or capable threat,” the source adds.
Threats to the exchange aren’t new.
In October, a collective hacker group sympathizing with the Occupy Wall Street movement protesting outside of the exchange known as Anonymous said in a statement widely distributed among the media that it would wipe out the exchange's presence on the Internet.
"On Oct. 10, the NYSE will be erased from the Internet. On Oct. 10, expect a day that shall never, ever be forgotten," the collective hacker group known as Anonymous said in a digital voice recording addressed to the media.
It never happened.
Last week, the admitted mastermind of a foiled suicide attack on the New York City subways says he and two other men discussed high-profile targets while at an al-Qaida training compound in Pakistan, the Associated Press reported.
Najibullah Zazi, testifying at the Brooklyn trial of Adis Medunjanin, said the 2008 discussion centered on targets that would damage the U.S. economy, the AP reported.
He said they included the New York Stock Exchange, Times Square and an unspecified Walmart. Zazi said they eyed the subway because "it's the heart of everything in New York City," the AP reported.
Zazi and another man pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Medunjanin in a bid for leniency.
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