EU halts carbon trading after 'concerted' hack attacks

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 …

[Anonymous Coward]

Shock! Emporer's new clothes stolen!

Title says it all...

[-tim]

Douglas Adams told us.

If you try to tie currency to something other that gold or numbers in a computer, try to pick something that doesn't grow on trees. Maybe we do have a million years of history of using bad money.

[Elmer Phud]

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.

[BigFire]

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.

[asdf]

quite simple actually

When has the EU or any western European country ever passed on yet another tax? I am sure the gov gets their cut.

[Youngdog]

Insecure accounts?

What - did the thieves get them to hand over the goodies by telling them the other accounts didn't like them?

But on a more serious note I just hope the exchange's settlement system is equipped to link the serial number of the certificate to any credit that is traded or these boys could have got away scot free - they will just punt these back to the companies who trade with the exchange.

Adoption of multi-factor authentication? Stable door meet hor... oh wait where did he go?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sell ?

Why do the thieves need to sell them?

Perhaps they were stolen by a "green" group who are simply going to destroy the credits, denying business the opportunity to offset some carbon.

[Anonymous John]

Subject: Call for Urgent

Sir,

I am attorney to late Mr. James L.Dukes who died at camberwell East London on the 11th December, but since his death, nobody has come forward to put a claim to his carbon credits Valued at Thirty million US dollars ($30,000,000.00) He did not disclose any next of kin as was required, hence the bank mandated me to present his Next Of Kin. That is why I need immediate assistance from you to expedite the transfer of the inheritance fund to your account.

[Smudger 1]

Arithmetic doesn't add up...

We start with: "some two-million allowances worth about €30m"

We then get: "While each ton of credit is worth about €2m apiece"

Finally, "the theft of 250,000 carbon permits worth over €3m."

If we assume that 1 "allowance" = 1 certificate = 1 credit = 1 ton = 1 tonne = 1 "permit" of CO2,

then apparently the price of a credit starts at 15 euro, rises to 2 million euro and then falls to 12 euro. Phew, that must be difficult to keep track of...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmm... stollen

title says it all.

[Max Jalil]

Almost as pointless as winning

$10,000 in iTunes vouchers

[Ross 7]

Have your cake and eat it

"...so it's not clear if a thief would be able to profit by reselling the stollen credits"

I thought we were talking about carbon credits, not cake?

[Sarah Bee]

Re: Have your cake and eat it

Heh. Fixed now, thanks.

Now I'm hungry.