The company made the allegations in an announcement released on the 26 October, plainly titled: -Reuters News Agency Broke into Intentia's IT Systems."
The company launched an internal investigation into the matter after Reuters allegedly reported on their profit reports before they were officially released.
The company claims to have found evidence of "unauthorised entry" into their computer systems. This entry occurred six minutes before Reuters released a bulletin based on the Q3 profit report, according to a statement made by the company.
"The entry took place at 12:51 pm on October 24th 2002, prior to the publication of the interim report for the third quarter of 2002. At approximately 12:57 pm, Reuters published the first news flash giving information on Intentia's third quarter result, without prior confirmation from the Company. Intentia issued its earnings report ahead of schedule at 1:22 pm that same day." Intentia said in the statement.
They claim to have traced this unauthorised access back to an IP address belonging to the Reuters news agency.
The CEO of Intentia, Björn Algkvist, said "We question the methods used by Reuters, and our judgement is that we cannot rule out the possibility of illegal actions. As a consequence we will file criminal charges regarding the incident."
The company has contacted the Stockholm Stock Exchange regarding the alleged security breach. "We will disclose to the Stockholm Stock Exchange all technical details on how the intrusion was made, which will allow them to share this information with other listed companies, so that actions preventing similar events in the future can be made." Mr. Algkvist said.
Intentia's share price took a massive dive after the disappointing profit results were made public.
