Intentia: Reuters hacked financial results

Swedish information technology company Intentia International AB has filed a criminal complaint against Reuters Ltd. alleging that the U.K.-based news agency illegally obtained Intentia's third quarter financial results by hacking the company's corporate Web server. Reuters has denied the charge, according to a published report.

Following an internal investigation of the alleged intrusion, Intentia says that it has proof of unauthorized entry to their corporate Web server from an Internet Protocol (IP) address belonging to a Reuters company, according to Thomas Ahlerup, head of corporate and investor relations at the Stockholm, Sweden-based enterprise application provider.

A Reuters spokeswoman acknowledged that a journalist in the company's Stockholm bureau had obtained a copy of the report from Intentia's Web site, but denied that the company had violated the law.

"We are rejecting (Intentia's) allegations completely. Information was accessed from company's Web site and in the public domain. It wasn't a private site. It wasn't password protected. (The report) was on their public Internet site; it was published, and therefore we reported it," said company spokeswoman Susan Allsop.

According to a statement published on Intentia's Web site, an intrusion from the IP address belonging to Reuters was recorded at 12:51 p.m. Stockholm time on October 24, 2002. At 12:57 p.m., Reuters published a news flash containing information on Intentia's third quarter results, an hour ahead of the scheduled earnings release time of 2:00 p.m. Stockholm time.

In response to the report, Intentia moved its own announcement up to 1:22 p.m. on that day.

Ahlerup would not comment on the means that Reuters may have used to acquire the information, saying only that the report was on a private area of Intentia's Web server, that there was no link to the report on Intentia's Web site, and that the report had not been disclosed to the public.

"We can not rule out the fact that (Reuters) accessed the private part of our Web server in the way that they did," Ahlerup said.

"We're not accusing Reuters, but we cannot rule out that someone used an IP address belonging to Reuters to access our site and that Reuters published an alert (on Intentia's earnings) six minutes after that."

Allsop confirmed that no link to the report was provided on the Intentia Web site. Citing the legal actions taken against the company, however, she refused to say how the file was located on the site.

"The journalist located it on their site, but not using any illegal means. The journalist didn't hack into their system. The report was on their site in an area where you would expect it to be. Anybody looking for it at that site would have found it," Allsop said.

Allsop refused to identify the reporter who obtained the earnings report.

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