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The intrusions did not affect Nasdaq's stock trading systems and no customer data was compromised, Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. said. Nasdaq is the largest electronic securities trading market in the U.S., with more than 2,800 listed companies.

A federal official told The Associated Press that the hackers broke into the service repeatedly over more than a year. Investigators are trying to identify the hackers, the official said. The motive is unknown. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the inquiry by the FBI and Secret Service is continuing.

The targeted service, Directors Desk, helps companies share documents with directors between scheduled board meetings. It also allows online discussions and Web conferencing within a board. Since board directors have access to information at the highest level of a company, penetrating the service could be of great value for insider trading.

Nasdaq OMX spokesman Frank DeMaria said the Justice Department had requested that the company keep silent about the intrusion until at least Feb. 14. However, The Wall Street Journal reported the investigation on its website late Friday, prompting Nasdaq to issue a statement and notify its customers.

DeMaria said Nasdaq OMX detected "suspicious files" during a regular security scan on U.S. servers unrelated to its trading systems and determined that Directors Desk was potentially affected. It pulled in forensic firms and federal law enforcement for an investigation. They found no evidence that customer information was accessed by hackers.

Rich Mogull, an analyst and CEO with the security research firm Securosis, said Web-accessible services like Directors Desk are a prime target for hackers, and have sometimes been a back door for systems that aren't directly connected to the Web. The presence of files on the Directors Desk system and the claim that no customer information was compromised could indicate that hackers were able to get in but not complete their attack, he said.

Computer security experts have long warned that many companies aren't doing enough to protect sensitive data, and recent events have underlined the point. The secret-spilling organization WikiLeaks has published confidential documents from banks in Switzerland and Iceland and claims to have incriminating documents from a major U.S. bank, possibly Bank of America.

In 1999, hackers infiltrated the websites of Nasdaq and the American Stock Exchange leaving taunting messages, but Nasdaq officials said then that there was no evidence the break-ins affected financial data.

Nasdaq OMX CEO Bob Greifeld said in a statement that cyber attacks against corporations and government are constant and the company is vigilant in maintaining security.

"We continue to evaluate and enhance our advanced security controls to respond to the ever increasing global cyber threat and continue to devote extensive resources to further secure our systems," he said.

Some of the Wall Street's technological scares have been unrelated to hackers. In June 2009, a computer glitch knocked out trading in 242 stocks on the New York Stock Exchange for several hours.

More recently, high-speed trading software precipitated a "flash crash" on May 6. One trade worth $4.1 billion touched off a chain of events that ended with 30 stocks listed in the S&P 500 index falling at least 10 percent within five minutes. The drop briefly wiped out $1 trillion in market value as some stocks traded as low as a penny.

But it's hard to know which part of the evening will give him more heartburn - seeing the Bears' archrivals, the Green Bay Packers, clashing with the Pittsburgh Steelers for football's crown, chewing on the Wisconsin sausage the mayor of Milwaukee is bringing, or sitting for a pregame interview with Fox's Bill O'Reilly.

The conservative show-host and pundit has been granted the interview since Fox is broadcasting this year's game from Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas. It's certainly not out of love for Fox, which has been denounced by Obama aides as a vitriolic mouthpiece for his foes. Last year, when CBS had the game, Mr. Obama was interviewed by Katie Couric.

Ahead of his interview, O'Reilly forecast it'll be "the most watched that's ever been done in the history of mankind."

Despite the sometimes hard feelings, it's hardly President Obama's first interview with Fox, and not even his first with O'Reilly. The two faced off in September 2008 when he was a candidate.

Still, the interview, which was being taped during the day Sunday, fit neatly into Mr. Obama's theme for this year's Super Bowl bash: an above-the-fray - albeit somewhat resigned - good fellowship. And its background includes his appeals to turn down the heat of political rhetoric, first after his November election "shellacking," then after the deadly shootings last month at a Tucson, Ariz., congressional district meeting.

Hence the White House guest list, which numbers around 100 and includes lawmakers and officials from both parties - and both states with a stake in Sunday's game. It included Pennsylvania senators Robert Casey, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey, a Republican; Wisconsin Rep. Reid Ribble, a Republican who represents Green Bay; and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, one of two Republicans in the Obama Cabinet.

Also coming: singers Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, co-owners of the NFL Miami Dolphins.

As to the game itself, since the Bears aren't in it, Obama has pronounced himself neutral - unlike last year, when he openly rooted for the Steelers or the previous year when he was "pretty sympathetic" to the New Orleans Saints.

His neutrality is born of a diehard fan's pain.

The Bears were trounced by the Packers in the NFC championship game. Three days later, the day after his State of the Union speech, President Obama flew into Green Bay for a political speech and was promptly handed a Packers jersey and obliged to pose for pictures. He accused his hosts of "rubbing it in."

Later, during a factory tour, while saluting the long Packers-Bears rivalry and wishing the Packers good luck, he couldn't help adding, "We will get you next year."

Then, this past week, President Obama showed his AFC side - and stressed his Steelers credentials - during a speech at Penn State. Noting he's named team owner Dan Rooney ambassador to Ireland, he said he's "got some love for the Steelers," too.

No sitting president has ever been to a Super Bowl. President Obama said he'd like to go - if the Bears were in it.

But given the mass viewership and the hoopla surrounding the game, recent presidents have developed a not-very-surprising need to see and be seen on the big day.

Jimmy Carter famously made a $5 bet with his mother, Miss Lillian, on the outcome of the 1979 Super Bowl - and lost, when the Dallas Cowboys beat the Steelers.

In 1985, just hours after being sworn in for his second term, Ronald Reagan, who portrayed a football player in the movies (1940's "Knute Rockne, All American"), tossed the coin for the Super Bowl in a live White House hookup to the game in Stanford, Calif.

In 1998, President Bill Clinton managed to host a Super Bowl viewing party at the depths of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Afterward, a spokesman said Clinton was "amazingly upbeat."

Even President George W. Bush, whose true passion was baseball (he was a former co-owner of the Texas Rangers), made sure to phone the winning Super Bowl coaches during his two terms, even if the game was out West and he had to stay up long past his normal bedtime.

Meantime, at President Obama's Super Bowl party on Sunday, the Wisconsin contingent will include Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who saw the president during his Green Bay-area stop.

Barrett said watching the big game with the number-one Bears fan will be "particularly satisfying". He plans to bring his 18-year-old son and baskets from two well-known Milwaukee companies, Usinger's Sausage and Klement's Sausage.

It's unclear if President Obama will see that, too, as rubbing it in.

Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli told Kenneth Feinberg, who was appointed to run the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, that his job "is not to preserve the $20 Billion fund that BP has established or to return money to BP."

To date about $3.5 billion from that fund has been paid. Whatever amount is not ultimately paid out to claimants goes back to BP. Perrelli made clear in his three-page letter made available by the Justice Department that his concerns had been simmering since the fund was established nine months ago.

"Businesses in the Gulf that have suffered harm as a result of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill need to be investing in their businesses and marketing themselves now to avoid losing another year of revenue and to continue the revitalization of the Gulf that is a national priority," Perrelli said. "This is a matter of urgency."


Perrelli, the third-ranking Justice Department official, has been the government's point man on the issue since the spill.

"The impact of the spill on the lives of the people of the Gulf cannot be overstated," Perrelli said. He said Feinberg had interpreted the rules too narrowly, and said claims should be granted not only where damages were directly caused by the spill, but from communities that demonstrate "pervasive affects of the spill on the overall economy."

Feinberg, a longtime Democrat and associate of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, was appointed to the Gulf claims position because of his skillful handling of highly complex and controversial claims by families and survivors from the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In that case, Feinberg attempted to pay all reasonable claims while protecting taxpayer dollars, not corporate dollars.