Slashdot Mirror
Hackers Penetrate Nasdaq Computer Networks
PatPending tips a Wall Street Journal report claiming that hackers have repeatedly broken into the computer networks of the company running the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.
"The exchange's trading platform—the part of the system that executes trades—wasn't compromised, these people said. However, it couldn't be determined which other parts of Nasdaq's computer network were accessed. Investigators are considering a range of possible motives, including unlawful financial gain, theft of trade secrets and a national-security threat designed to damage the exchange. The Nasdaq situation has set off alarms within the government because of the exchange's critical role, which officials put right up with power companies and air-traffic-control operations, all part of the nation's basic infrastructure."
This is all the fault of too much government.
I'm not sure people would notice, even if it was worse.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Given the government's insistence they need to have power to kill-switch the internet, I can't help wondering if this was staged.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Wall Street Bonuses last year was $20.3 billion.
I think it's obvious who is hacking the system.
.
That's really scary -- I trade for my living these days (my own money only) and of course, use computers to do it -- theirs and mine.
.
We could hope that all it is is some evilt HFT firm trying to figure out how to quote-stuff better and make a little more money on the spreads quicker, but somehow, having that be the best possible likely outcome is scary itself.
.
This house of cards of money that is really only bits is utterly dependent on trust. Probably most here don't have a serious "life savings" put at risk like this (on top of the normal risks we take to get a reward), but believe me, if you wanted to put this country in the crapper, hard and long, this would be one of the easier ways to do it. Think of all the lawsuits over who had what imaginary money seconds before and seconds after a successful crack attack -- with no one having access to their own money until after "one duration of SCO lawsuits" -- ruination for many, and not just the fat cats.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Considering that 80% of activity in the market is program trading and that 70% of shares are held for 11 seconds or less, I think we have bigger problems. This whole shebang is not, strictly speaking, capitalism. It's parasitic roulette played with imaginary money. Of course, at the end of the week the players get to take home real money.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
The Nasdaq situation has set off alarms within the government because of the exchange's critical role, which officials put right up with power companies and air-traffic-control operations, all part of the nation's basic infrastructure.
Does anyone outside of Wall Street believe that?
If NASDAQ were compromised, nothing would happen to us real investors. We'd still have our securities even if they're kept in street name.
The only people who be affected would be the traders - so, they get a day or two off.
Every one seems to be so full of themselves lately!
And it's pretty sad when a market place is considered to be so important - securities were traded long before NASDAQ existed and if NASDAQ went away, there would be a replacement - quickly. They're not irreplaceable.
[thinfoilhat] ...so would they really tell us? nah, they'd try to get the crackers for other legal crime, but they'll never admit it.
Assume for a second the whole system was compromised.
If they admit it, they would cause fear and uncertainty in the market, bringing in even worse situations.
[/thinfoilhat]
Any yet it's almost impossible to get research funding for developing proof systems for computer programs, and/or developing proof-friendly (e.g., non-Turing-complete) languages, which could eliminate whole categories of vulnerabilities and bugs. Epic.
... that we're hacked from PlentyOfFish a little while ago!
Time to break out the illegal wiretaps and ignore the 4th amendment some more.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Motives included unlawful financial gain? That's amusing!
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Everything must go. NASDAQ was just the first step. Better go check the basement of the social security building in MD. I'll bet you'll find the hackers there. Oh um bring some firepower with you. Seriously though, that must have been one talented hack.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
the computer network of the company that runs the Nasdaq Stock Market
Well there's your first problem. What the hell is a private corporation doing controlling an entire nation's stock market? If it's something so huge and influential and important to the country it can be the target of attack to disrupt our economy, it should damn well be under Military-grade security and government control.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Disturbing given the sheer magnitude of people affected.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but the first motive I came up with was manufacturing a reason for the kill switch...
You know, it won't be long before the algorithms used for trading become pseudo-genetic, and start to do this kind of stuff themselves.
The trading that goes on is influenced as much by meta-information as it is solid information.
For all we know that could be part of the system by now already.
I wouldn't be surprised - in fact I'd EXPECT that words like "google" "fox" and "recession" are either hard-coded into algorithms or the hardest-hitting highest profile terms used to weigh the value of stocks.
There's no way you can design a secure system. Attacks like this should be considered a constant, and you need to find a smarter way to discourage them.
I say that the best way is to design a system with low-hanging fruit to serve as detection of an attack, which will shut down access to the higher level stuff when it detects intrusion - or far better, replace real information with fake information. Make the attackers think they've succeeded, feed them false positives and misinformation, and then relax knowing your information is secure. In this way you're not so much building a wall that can't be broken down, you're attacking a soft target. No idea how effective it'd be in practice though.
Don't pay any attention to this though, I'm just rambling.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
For all that the day to day transaction on the stock market have very little relation to what's happening in the real world, when the stock market crashes it does have an effect on the real economy.
So i guess it's a really good thing that we don't have to worry about a cyberwar or we might be it real trouble! After all, the countries that don't like America would never want to hurt us economically unless they were also willing to invade!
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Nasdaq? In the financial exchange world, their techies are very very good all things considered; they right a tight, efficient, ship relatively speaking. If (if, I say it louder, _if_) they were under a motivated attack that had some success, you should fear that other exchanges are more deeply compromised - most notably the NYSE. In terms of technological ability, trying to compare the Nasdaq vs NYSE is ... I just can't think of suitable analogies; maybe a car analogy ... Toyota in year 2000 vs GM in year 1975 comes pretty close... ? More likely this is an opportunistic non-consequential hack; if it's serious business they wouldn't go for Nasdaq first. That would be just silly.
The powers that be should be deeply afraid in general. One day a terrorist might shut down key features of the USA financial system. And after that, the next time a retiree decides she needs to sell some 401(k) shares to pay for her expected retirement expenses, it may take - not microseconds, not even milliseconds, not even seconds, but maybe even HOURS for the trade to be confirmed. The truly terrible threat is that she finds out that it really made no practical difference to her after all. An awful lot of people and a ton of money is tied up on the assumption that every extra microsecond it takes to effect a stock transaction is a huge macroeconomic drag; if evidence were to point otherwise there would be no end to the repercussions.
Was it Goldman-Sachs?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
hmm... is there computer access in the prison library?
I do actually find this story rather scary; but not because of the "zOMG hackerz@!" angle. Of course there are going to be hackers sniffing around stock exchanges. Given that online attacks aimed at penny-ante shit like hotmail accounts, facebook, and WoW are economically viable, obviously there is going to be some interest in hitting the places where the actual money lives...
The scary bit is the idea that it is a generally accepted truth among the feds and similar that the ability of noise-traders to slosh imaginary money around like shit through a goose is a critical part of American infrastructure and a national security concern. As important as Power companies? Srsly? Are we really so deep in stacks of heavily leveraged electronic monopoly money that continued access to electronic exchanges is as important as continued access to electricy? If so, we really are fucked.
Power companies and air traffic control? Brilliant. Why not put the main systems of nuclear power plants online also?
This is one of the many areas that Schneier and Clarke talk about being 'offlimits' when nation/actors conduct 'cyberwar'. Of course, who plays by the books? Not the bad guys... or us for that matter!
Oddly, most of those subpoenaed have long since gone blind.
The prevailing wisdom with vital computer infrastructure is to have it on a private network with no internet interconnect, but how do you do that with a system designed to handle public input? I think the next step is a stripped down OS running software written just for that task, with no extra functionality. The simpler the system the fewer parts you have to security audit. Of course that still leaves the problem of are the people running the system trustworthy (It's a black box, with no public scrutiny of its operations).
I think a fundamental fact of the rich: they never gamble with -their- money, just yours.
I've never understood why so much importance is put on these big financial institutions. They cannot actually create wealth. They can only increase the efficiency of an economic system by getting money from those who want to invest to those who want to expand. Economies aren't driven by investment, they're driven by spending.
Im not a conspiracy theorist or anything of the sort. But with the whole internet kill switch thing back up on the block for the second time this type of thing comes at a very convienent time. Especially involving wallstreet since thats where all the countries top financial dogs hang out and effecting nasdaq effects all the rich and powerful of the country. Just struck me as odd that it wasnt a full out attack, just a release that they found hackers in there. No damage was done, but just enough to put a good scare into stockholders, investors and company heads. All the sudden to the influential people of the country a internet kill switch doesnt seem so crazy when their personal fortune is on the proverbial chopping block.
Its a pity our entire country hangs on the balance of the stock market though. We have no redundencies, no back ups or anything. Stock market is one of just a few keystones needed to keep our entire country afloat. Its all we have. We dont make anything, we dont export anything, we arent self sufficient at all. If you knock out the stock market entirely or even just intterupt it rammifications would be immediate. Stock market and our military are the only things that even put us on the radar of other countries. Without them the united states would become as important as haiti is to the rest of the world.
First of this is a private company. Sure they are probably one of the most regulated organizations in existence but they are still private. Other that SEC compliance issues that might be a result of this hack Government has no damned business being involved or even commenting.
Second comparing it to air traffic control is just stupid. The market has circuit breakers, it takes holidays, and there is a history of closures and outages. When was the last time anyone turned off air traffic control? That's right NEVER, on the other hand the nation seems to hmm along just fine Saturdays, Sundays, all the hours outside of 9:30a - 4p the rest of the week, without the NASDAQ being open.
I am not saying unexpected market closures are not majorly disruptive but nobody dies so they really are not up their with some of those other services.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Strikes at the heart of capitalism. Time to upgrade to OSX or Windows.
even better..... :)
http://home.swbell.net/mck9/cobol/ooc/ooc.html
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Now is the time to buy stock in door-to-door delivered local newspaper companies. When TSHTF and the internet is switched off, the demand for good old newspapers will surge.
Per WSJ story (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704858404576127854072207040.html , use google hole to view) intruders "...installed malicious programs on a Web-accessible system called Director's Desk, one of its technology offerings that facilitates communication and sharing of files among corporate officers."
I wonder how many key-loggers etc are cleaned up from executive workstations an laptops every day in US but never reported.
The crooks just realized that the largest casino is located on the East Coast. And instead of having to deal with the mob afterwards, they just have angry pensioners and some low-life pension-funds who are basically tooth-less when they can't bribe or strong-arm somebody into what they want him to do.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
"The exchange's trading platform—the part of the system that executes trades—wasn't compromised, these people said."
Yeah, because security professionals are great at knowing what part of systems *haven't* been compromised. Just ask Gawker.
Not at all what everyone's assuming - way more than what meets the eye. See
http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffreycarr/2011/02/06/nasdaqs-hacked-directors-desk-allegedly-violated-ftc-rules/
If this is pursued in a court (no, not the hackers), likely to break some new grounds.
I am not sure, but was not the economic crisis because of all the stocks having been invested and everything teetering on the edge of disaster, is this not another crisis waiting to happen?
What can be done against this, I do not think separating all computers to be independent (like in BSG) is an option here.