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Computer Virus Fells Russian Stock Exchange

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."

15 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. stupid... by advocate_one · · Score: 4, Interesting

    we have a testing machine... connected to the internet of all things... AND connected to the same network the production system is running on... and evidently it's running on ms-windows...

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    Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
    1. 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
  2. Wargames by digital-madman · · Score: 4, Funny

    Virus? I wanted to play Global Thermonuclear War....

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  3. Russia has a stock exchange? by heatdeath · · Score: 4, Funny

    And they use computers? This is excellent news!

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  4. 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

  5. But Russia has good hackers... by caluml · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is ironic, as Russia has arguably some of the best computer security experts in the world. Those that know how to exploit the holes can also advise how to secure against threats. I wonder if it's due to talented Russians leaving the country to work abroad?

  6. 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"
    1. Re:You let M$ near your cash? by benjamindees · · Score: 4, Interesting

      the CIA, backed by President Ronald Reagan, aimed to bring down the Russian economy with dodgy software.

      too.. many.. jokes...

      --
      "I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
  7. Re:What stock exchange? by ktulu182 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Are you living in a cave? Russian stock market almost doubled last year. It was the most profitable stock market in the world in 2005.

  8. Re:Ah, but they didn't say.... by TIMxPx · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's four 286s and an Apple IIe in Vlad Putin's cousin's basement.

    --
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  9. 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
  10. Obligatory... by David+Horn · · Score: 3, Funny

    In Russia, stock exchange fells you!

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    PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
  11. Groupthink (was: the obvious response?) by Gary+W.+Longsine · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.
    Although that might be a reasonable and rational statement on the surface, the fact is that Windows systems are now at the heart of critical systems everywhere. Although I'm surprised to see them playing such a critical roll in a stock exchange, I'm only a little tiny bit surprised, and mostly ashamed of my own instinctive reaction.

    When these decisions are being made, you may feel as though you're stuck in a slow-motion sequence in a horror film, leaping to save someone, someone very beautiful that you could care about deeply if only you knew them a little better, someone who doesn't deserve to be eaten alive by a vicious monster, or maybe they do, but you just don't know it, anyway you don't know it and you didn't thnk of that until later, much later, after years of therapy in fact, all the while, leaping in futile slow motion to save a fatefully doomed monster victim, certain of their inevitable doom, crying "Nooooooo!" at the top of your lungs to no avail, due to the slow-motion and your voice having been run through an under-water pitch-reducing distortion filter. Yet another heroine devoured by the monster, just out of arms reach... You think to yourself, "If only... If only... If only I hadn't been stuck on slow motion..." when suddenly realize you're not alone, and you're thinking out loud, reliving the nightmare.

    At this point a friend interrupts your navel gazing to say, "The monster would have eaten you too. Don't feel so guilty." whereas the cliche movie therapist would say, "How does that make you feel?" If you hear the former response, you're probably in meatspace, the latter, and you're still either dreaming or you really are a character in a horror film, and the monster is about to come crashing up through the floor or in through the window and eat your therapist.

    Windows systems can be found:

    • running U.S. Navy warships
    • running medical imaging, monitoring, and other life-critical devices
    • running train control systems
    • running nuclear power plants
    • running ATM networks and other aspects of the banking system

    Although it might be true that no rational and informed person would set up such critical systems on a system with the stability and security track record of Windows, remember that such decisions are typically made by a bureaucracy, not by rational and informed individuals. The field of psychology has studied this phenomenon and call it "groupthink".

    Groupthink
    Wikipedia on Groupthink
    A First Look at Communication Theory (Ch. 18, 3rd Edition)

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    1. Re:Groupthink (was: the obvious response?) by SgtChaireBourne · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Regarding the US Navy warships,

      1. Newport News Shipbuilding is awarded a contract for the first of the new "Ronald Reagan" class of aircraft carriers.

      2. Bill Gates gets out his check book and instantly becomes the second largest stockholder (owner) in Newport News Shipbuilding.

      3. Newport News Shipbuilding selects Microsoft to develop the warfare systems. Microsoft, a company with no experience in warfare systems, and a reputation for unstable, insecure software, will base the Ronald Reagan's warfare systems on an unproven operating system with 63,000 known bugs . . err, oops, I meant "points of focus" - Windows 2000.

      4. Press releases were sent out assuring us Bill Gates' huge investment had nothing to do with the decision. So see there, Doreen - what we did last month had nothing to do with your pregnancy - it's right here in my press release.

      5. Once Newport News is in too deep to bail out, Bill Gates will be free to sell his stock holdings and use the money to make sure some other company makes the "right" decision.

      -- http://www.aaxnet.com/news/M000714.html

      group think is definitely a factor, but there is also Chairman Gates' investments to think of .

      Along the same lines, back before The Register got all soft on Gates, the posted his major purchase. Actually it was made by his investment firm, such firms being almost textbook examples of group think, it was the deciding piece in realizing the US would soon enter protracted war. Such stocks are only 'undervalued' if prolonged war is planned. It's not like a shipyard can just squeeze out a carrier or two per quarter.

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  12. The Yorktown by westlake · · Score: 4, Informative
    Except when the computers on the warship crashed and forced the Navy to tow it back to port. But, you know, other than a catostrophic crash everything is running great

    This has become tiresome.

    The Yorktown (CG-48) was in 1997 a test-bed for the Navy's Smart Ship program. USS Yorktown (CG-48) Test-beds are driven to failure. In 2004,the year of her retirement, Yorktown was assigned to Strike Group Wasp, a vote of confidence, I would think, in the vessel and in the technology. USS Yorktown Deploys as Part of Expeditionary Strike Group