-- Financial Times, 11/29/96 REUTERS STAFFER SABOTAGES HONG KONG BANK DEALING ROOMS A computer operator at Reuters in Hong Kong recently sabotaged the dealing room systems of five of the company's investment bank clients. The attack crippled for up to 36 hours the computer systems delivering market prices and news to traders at NatWest Markets, Jardine Fleming, Standard Chartered and two other banks. The banks, which resorted to alternative terminals such as Bloomberg, claimed the tampering had no significant impact on trading and said neither they nor their clients experienced losses as a result. The initial breach occurred on November 18. Reuters engineer Winston Cheng (now suspended) allegedly paid maintenance visits to several clients and used his password to gain access to the operating system at the heart of the Reuters networks. He entered commands that would delete key operating system files after a delay to allow him to leave the building. The first bank to report problems at 6:00 P.M. was Standard Charter, followed by the others. The dealing room systems were partially fixed by the morning to allow trading to continue more or less as normal but it was not until the next day that they were restored to full operation. As well as reviewing procedures on staff, Reuters is considering restrictions on its maintenance engineers' access to trading floors and the system software.