EC suspends carbon trading market following hack

Trading suspended following theft of £5.7m of carbon allowances by hacker

The European Commission has suspended carbon trading across all European greenhouse gas emissions registries after a Czech company reported the loss of £5.7m of carbon allowances. A hacking incident was blamed for the loss.

Alan Bentley, senior vice-president at IT security firm Lumension, said: "Whilst the theft is worrying, the fact that a trading market has been paralysed gives the most cause for concern. This attack has disrupted a European infrastructure."

The EC has said that the markets will not operate again until Wednesday 26 January 2011 at the earliest.

"If the registry has been polluted by hackers, the market is in trouble," argued Bentley. "The registry holds allocations for each EU country, meaning that if the integrity of that data has been compromised, it will be difficult to switch the market back on."

Mark Darvill of security provider AEP Networks added that EU member countries need to work together to protect each registry from attack.

"It's simply not enough for the European Commission to ensure that its own trading platform is protected with the highest levels of security. Whilst we'll see a blame game take place over the next few weeks, each and every single member state must put in place the highest levels of security to ensure the reliability, survivability and resilience of data on the carbon market."