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London Stock Exchange Was 'Under Major Cyberattack' During Linux Switch
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Computerworld UK:
"The London Stock Exchange's new open source trading system may have been hacked last year, according to a report. The alleged attack came as the LSE began the switch over to the Linux-based systems, according to the dates referred to in the Times newspaper. The continued threat of cyber attack has resulted in the LSE keeping a close dialogue with British security services, which this year branded cyber attacks as one of the biggest threats to the country. There were major problems on the exchange on 24 August, when stock prices of five large companies collapsed."
A threat to national security!
'may have been' another piece of MS-sponsored FUD?
Whoops!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The website is extremely vague as to timelines of what system was in place when there were issues. Was .NET still in place, or was it indeed the Linux system when it got hacked. I'd like to see more details.
Part of thinks that these guys may have had easy access to the stock exchange system through whatever backdoor they had. Closing it then pissed them off so they went on the attack.
Task Mangler
The question I would have is this: Would the MS system have held better?
I am not a Linux nor a MS lover. I see the limitations of both OS-es. Neither are absolute secure, and I can hack neither (since I can't hack).
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
It gives me the heebie-jeebies to think of what could happen to a trading network connected to the Internet. I imagine Stuxnet aimed at financial systems. Shudder.
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
The number of people able to access any other port than the 1 or 2 necessary for exchange functions should number in the single digits for the production servers ... and even they shouldn't use computers with general internet access for that, at most computers with a "hardware" VPN solution. Hell given the amount of money involved I wouldn't even let non production servers and source code be accessed on any computer with general internet access ... fuck convenience, for this kind of money you can afford a whole lot of inconvenience.
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Where would the D: drive be mounted in Linux?
No worries. The LSE collapses due to fatal infosec problems and the UK taxpayer picks up the bill. We could probably pick up some bargain-basement deals on whichever companies were affected by the trading system collapse too. In the long term, allowing poorly secured systems to fail is a kind of digital natural selection.
Maybe it was running Mono.
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) have not yet moved on to the new Linux based Millenium trading platform - this is scheduled to happen on Feb 14th. It was supposed to have happened late last year but was delayed.
A subsiduary of the LSE, the Turquoise Multilateral trading Facility (MTF) has already migrated to the MIT platform though.
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
A pointed out already, it seems that the system WAS the MS system. The migration to Linux was not yet done.
Move Sig. For great justice.
The question I would have is this: Would the MS system have held better?
The answer is "it depends".
Mostly, it depends on who's doing the hacking and who's managing the system. If it's a bunch of script kiddies or some bot which tries a number of well-known hacks then gives up and the system is competently managed, chances are neither would be particularly insecure.
If the system is poorly managed - be it Windows or Linux - chances are it's not going to take much effort to get in and some kid following a script without really understanding it could do it.
Where things get interesting (and impossible to discuss meaningfully without a better understanding of the systems themselves) is when you have competent, well-funded IT management (which I would hope any stock exchange would) and competent, well-funded attackers who are focused on a single goal (which is entirely possible when you're talking about a high-profile victim like this).
From one of the comments
"A half truth is a whole lie" ---Yiddish proverb.
This is just awesome. Just when you would think it would be impossible to spin an attack on a major Microsoft based trading system, they omit Microsoft, insert Linux and speak of the dreaded cyberattack.
I have to wonder who and why. Anyone have any background on the author and the publication's history on Linux and Windows stories?
the byline reads "Steve Ballmer".
Out of many different securities markets LSE has most bizarre bureaucratic procedures, rules, and provisioning processes. In the past years their market share shrunk a lot under pressure from much simpler to deal with MTFs (BATS, Chi-X etc.) Seems like they have too many people busy making work for themselves and their clients.
Besides they have not switched to Millennium (Linux based) yet. I'm not holding my breath though. Millennium platform is developed by Sri-Lancan Millennium IT. Out of all places where you have people skilled in developing trading engines I would pick maybe New York or Chicago. But Colombo???
microsoft?
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Did they use an external firm, to do this? If so, how come someone knew that at that time they were changing systems, and would know that the change was one of the OS, unless it came from the inside, I would look at who had access to that info, and then maybe go from there...
If someone leaked from the inside, then there would be a trace, usually...as this costs many millions of dollars.
"The London Stock Exchange's new open source trading system may have been hacked last year"
And where's the evidence, the article is technically erroneous and totally short on any verifiable facts.
"Unlike US exchanges, the LSE platform is not based on the internet ..
"The new Linux system, based in a C++ environment"
Please define a 'C++ environment', and provide examples?
link
Uh oh. That means it's almost certainly Java, which never is a good idea for low-latency systems. Where RT, ULL and GRIO is concerned, it's pretty much the last choice I'd recommend.
Did you RTFA? The outages occurred on the Microsoft .NET system, not on the Linux system. The linux system isn't even on line yet. You MS fanbois really aught to learn to read.
The answer to that is in the article. It was the Microsoft .NET system which failed. The Linux system isn't even on line yet.
Imagine that in the conversion from MS Windows server to Linux, the attack succeeded on the Linux side. Who would profit from the publicity? Would some company pay to have such attacks take place? Just some far-out thoughts.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada