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Computer Virus Fells Russian Stock Exchange

Posted by Zonk on from the doesn't-pick-up-after-itself dept.

azav wrote to mention the New Scientist story detailing the computer virus that brought down the Russian Stock Exchange. From the article: "As the world waited for one computer virus to strike on Friday, another wriggled its way into the Russian stock exchange and knocked it offline. Computer experts had warned that 3 February could bring gloom for many as a computer virus called Nyxem was scheduled to start deleting files on machines it had infected."

6 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. the obvious response by know1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    i know there will be people saying "oh my, running windows, sucks to be you" but if you look past the trollishness of these posts they actually have a point in this case. running windows as anything mission critical is stupid, it's a desktop system at heart, and an unstable one at that. running the bloody stock exchange on it is suicidal. theres always some dick who opens that dodgy email, so if your net is that important run the mission critical servers at least on some flavour of unix

    1. Re:the obvious response by Herschel+Cohen · · Score: 2, Insightful
      You are assuming that they are running Windows based only upon the breakin seems to fit the pattern. However, nowhere could I find any reference to the OS employed. Did I miss it?

      Other OSs are not immune to security breaches. Moreover, I am surprised any securities trading firm would use anything other than a Unix like OS. Hence, if Windows were really used it would be a significant portion of the story that was neglected, i.e.: "how did it get there?".

      Does anyone know with certainty that Windows (whatever name) was the OS used in this instance?

  2. You let M$ near your cash? by AHuxley · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Why connect a consumer operating system to any part of a financial hub?
    Did someone want to play a game?
    Download a funny clip?

    Did you learn nothing from the cold war?
    http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/02/071 9247

    M$ is the Trojan horse, you add it to your systems and anyone can just walk in.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  3. Re:stupid... by putko · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Standard practice at banks is two physically separated networks -- production & test.

    I don't know why the exchange would be any different.

    But things at banks and exchanges are very ninja-rigged. E.g. build an automated trading client that sumits multiple trades a second and the exchange is likely to ask you to do some rate-limiting -- their systems won't be able to handle it.

    --
    http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_s tone_your_children/dt21_18a.html
  4. Re:But Russia has good hackers... by szlevente · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not necessarily. Having the best security experts does not mean that they are also going to be hired as consultants for the stock exchange. Such juicy positions usually go to those having the best connections, not the best expertise.

  5. Re:I have a really hard time understanding... by masklinn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm not defending Microsoft, I'm merely saying that this kind of behaviour is childish, stupid and unproductive.

    If you want to attack Microsoft, do it while still respecting what shall be respected (the name of the company), attack them on their security record, on their monopolistic behaviour, on their lobbying methods, on the personality or missteps of their leaders, that's fair game, and that's sometimes productive and at least somewhat interresting.

    Oh, and everyone deserves to be defended btw, no matter who one is or what one did, one deserves a fair trial.

    --
    "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler