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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."
Try this instead: http://www.cio.co.uk/news/3258814/london-stock-exchange-under-major-cyberattack-during-linux-switch/
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
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
As the concern and speculation deepens around the LSE outages, the exchange is due to switch on the new Linux systems on its main exchange in two weeks’ time, with dress rehearsals over the coming two weekends. The system replaces a Microsoft .Net architecture.
As the Linux system isn't due to go "live" for another fortnight, I'd expect that it is the .NET based system that has been hacked.
'may have been' another piece of MS-sponsored FUD?
Of course, since everybody here knows Linux systems do not get attacked
Yes, at least that's the official Microsoft version. There are no viruses for Linux because no one uses it.
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).
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.
What I've heard is this. It's all hearsay, so is probably as factual as the FA.
The LSE is trying to (Stupidly) save face. They tried to go live and it was an absolute shit show, typical companies got about 20% compliance. There was no way they could roll forward, they had issues with firewalls, members had issues with routing and firewalls, trades weren't going through the system correctly for settlements, there was more bugs in member's code than ants in a nest. If they had said "We're going live anyway" there wouldn't have been a market on Monday morning. Aside from that, everyone goes into freeze for Christmas due to everyone taking time off, so it wouldn't have been sorted till at least after now, by which time, LSE would have lost so much business to the likes of NYSE (And potentially to Borsa Italiana, which is owned by the LSE) that it would be questionable whether they would still be in business by this stage.
They claimed previously that they were internally sabotaged, well, the running theory was that they just fucked up. To everyone involved that seems like a much more plausible option.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
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?
Ad banner: Your PC is currently under attack from thousands of viruses! Click here to prevent it from broadcasting it's IP address to hackers.
LSE Employee: Blimey! Ring the secret services! This is cyber war!
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
the byline reads "Steve Ballmer".
Also, there was no police investigation.
The system currently in place (.dot.NET-based) failed to meet the specs, because, try as they could, Accenture could not get a windows-based platform to run fast enough - too much letency.
The exchange finally realized it, and called for a linux-based system, which easily met the time guarantees - but obviously it's late, because it was only started when the exchange realized that the Microsoft-based system was never going to meet the performance goals.
In other words, after Microsoft spent big bucks in all the trade magazines bragging about "winning the contract against linux" - and making it sound like they were replacing a previous linux-based system, you won't hear a peep from them admitting that their servers are sh*t.