“But at the time, Nasdaq officials said there was no evidence they manipulated financial data.”

I have no reason to disbelieve these fine and impartial people. None whatsoever. Nope. How could I traduce the saintly reputation of somebody who is essentially paid to say “Nothing went wrong, and it isn’t our fault anyway?”

The problem might be that these fine people at the stock market make up all these numbers (which are then translated into real money) anyway. Now they cannot distinguish whether some hacker changed a value or someone “bumped fresh money into our economy”.