Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Hackers Penetrate Nasdaq Computer Networks

Posted by Soulskill on from the turn-on-your-firewall-gentlemen dept.

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."

5 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. False flag? by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:False flag? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Given the government's insistence they need to have power to kill-switch the internet, I can't help wondering if this was staged.

      From that comment I can tell you're actually familiar with how politics works.

      Unfortunately that goes so strongly against the combination of what most people are taught growing up plus what they would naively like to believe that you're likely to encounter a lot of irrational resistance. It's the kind of "yeah yeah how's that tin-foil hat fitting you" dismissal from people who refuse to seriously research the idea and look for past instances of it, yet feel that their highly emotional stance is a valid one. Perhaps they could start to enlighten themselves by researching Operation Northwoods to see what kind of false-flag operations our government is seriously prepared to use. Government is full of primitive asshats who subscribe to consequentialism; that is, the notion that the ends justify the means.

      Most ideas in politics like an "Internet kill-switch" are presented as proposals. They're more than that. They're more like "this is what we fully intend to do anyway" or they're more like "this is what we have been doing anyway and are now trying to legitimize by signing into law" (remember the retroactive immunity for warrantless wiretapping?). The proposal stage leads to a stage of framed debate, during which time the emphasis is placed not on the importance of civil rights and limited government, but instead on terrorists, hackers, or some other outside threat serving as a boogeyman.

      It's good old "correlation does not equal causality" again, and I'll explain the cart-before-horse nature of it. This is all designed to look like these actions are the effect of reasonable debate and popular support. In reality the appearance of debate and the drumming up of support is the effect of these actions. The ones who push for these increasingly fascist measures understand one thing very well: they only need a moment of support and it will be permanently enshrined in law, never to be repealed, no matter how many later regret getting suckered by the fear-based rhetoric. Understand this and you'll rarely (if ever) be surprised by anything you see on the news.

      As to whether this particular event was staged, I don't have proof one way or the other. It does remind me of a quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt: "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happened, you can bet it was planned that way."

  2. Wall Street Bonuses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wall Street Bonuses last year was $20.3 billion.
    I think it's obvious who is hacking the system.

  3. Trouble in the national casino! by wordsnyc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Trouble in the national casino! by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Make that 7 days, to allow people time to read the weekend coverage of the companies' market trading conditions. (And to ensure the risk of coming unstuck if you are relying on microsecond movements).

      No wealth is created by this kind of activity. The money that goes to the winners comes from your bank charges and insurance premiums.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII