NEW YORK: US criminal investigators are probing whether hackers broke into financial news company Dow Jones and seized market-moving information prior to publication, an FBI spokeswoman said on Friday.

“We are aware and we are looking into it,” the FBI spokeswoman told AFP, confirming a news report from Bloomberg News. Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, reported that the computer systems of Dow Jones & Co were infiltrated by Russian hackers, who stole information to trade on before it was published.

Bloomberg said it was not clear if information stolen included news stories, or embargoed financial data that had not yet been published.

Dow Jones, part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, which owns the Wall Street Journal, expressed scepticism about the report from Bloomberg, a head-to-head competitor in financial news and data.