Wall Street To Hold Quantum Dawn 2, Cyber-Attack Drill

BioTitan writes "It will be determined whether Wall Street could withstand a coordinated, large-scale cyberattack during the Quantum Dawn 2 exercise on July 18. Top firms will work together and with the government to find weak points in their systems. The exercise is a major shift from the first Quantum Dawn in November 2011, which simulated a physical terrorist attack on Wall Street (there was no physical exercise, it was all behind computers), and had firms try to prevent a mock stock market from crashing."

Comments

Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you like to play a game?

Re:Hello

[the eric conspiracy]

> The stock market isn't that much different than Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is a zero sum game.

Wall Street is a positive sum game.

Huge difference.

Put lots of mice

[TheModelEskimo]

...in your A/C ducts. Also make the openings in the ducts hard for people to get through. And always, ALWAYS check every firefighter or SWAT guy who comes through the building, even if he is ordering you around.

Now if this is a 100% software-based cyber-attack, just put "LATEST SYSTEM (TM)" somewhere on your screen so the enemy IT guys can just tell their boss, "I can't do this, it's the LATEST SYSTEM." That way they are forced to go "STRAIGHT IN" which, see firefighter advice above.

Major Security Hole

[puddingebola]

A major security hole was discovered when it was found that major banks could buy and trade stacks of shit mortgages insured by the nation's largest insurance companies.

Re:Major Security Hole

[Opportunist]

Doesn't matter.

We're looking for holes that work AGAINST the interests of big money, not FOR them.

And I should care?

[Jane Q. Public]

I hope it fails, and fails big.

It's high time people stopped confusing Wall Street with "the economy". A very large part of Wall Street anymore is little more than a glorified casino. And high-frequency trading combines the casino with a horse race.

Re:And I should care?

[the eric conspiracy]

I assume you are referring to the indirect purchase of GOVERNMENT issued debt by the FEDERAL Reserve aka Quantitative Easing?

Well. you have just about every fact in your post either flat out wrong or completely muddled. First it's 85 billion a month, and second the money flow is this:

1. Federal Gov issues bonds.
2. Banks buy the bonds.
3. Federal Reserve buys the bonds from banks.

Note this is a flow of money TO the government from the banking system. The banks are simple intermediates in the process. They don't profit on the transaction.

What does happen is the banks deleverage. They have less money loaned out In this case to the Federal Government). This allows the banks to make more loans. Because of the increased demand for bonds the overall interest rates decline. Because the banks have less debt and can loan more interest rates decline.

The idea that this is extorting money from the taxpayers is complete unvarnished BS.

I have a couple of suggestions for you:

1. Don't start off you post with an ad-hominem attack.
2. Learn something about what you are posting on before you make yourself look really bad when you respond.

Re:And I should care?

[Jane Q. Public]

"... the indirect purchase of GOVERNMENT issued debt by the FEDERAL Reserve aka Quantitative Easing?"

The Federal Reserve is about as "federal" as my neighbor's hemorrhoids. Other than having some people on the board government-appointed, it's not government at all. Each of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks is little more than a co-op of PRIVATE member banks, many of them largely owned by foreign interests.

"Note this is a flow of money TO the government from the banking system. The banks are simple intermediates in the process. They don't profit on the transaction."

Go back to school yourself. Quantitative Easing, by definition, is the buying of bonds WITH NEWLY CREATED DOLLARS. And I'll let you in on a little clue: the government pays interest on every one of those dollars created by the Federal Reserve.

It is BY DEFINITION inflationary. It is INTENDED TO BE inflationary (Bernanke's own words). And that inflation takes money straight out of citizens' pockets. Don't believe me? Compare your grocery bill to what it was 5 years ago. And commodities like food are among the FIRST things to go up.

"The idea that this is extorting money from the taxpayers is complete unvarnished BS."

It is nothing of the sort. The taxpayers get the money extorted from them all right. Just not directly. That's the beauty of the Federal Reserve system. Much of that loss comes from eventual higher government debt and inflation. But you had better believe it is real.

Wall Street

[Etherwalk]

A good part of the consumer wealth in this country is invested on wall street. As a result, when the market contracts, people become more worried about their retirement and become less willing to spend money.

Shortly after BoA bought Merrill Lynch, I happened to be in Sears buying two ovens. I was the only one in the store. I also bought a car a few days later, at the end of the quarter, and was able to get a great deal because nobody was buying.

What happens on Wall Street does a huge amount to shape the willingness of people to spend money--including the willingness of endowed institutions to spend money. That makes it important to the economy.

Re:Wall Street

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It is unquestionably a dangerously concentrated potential point of failure for a lot of broader economic activity. Whether it has commensurate benefits that would qualify it as 'important' is a slightly different question.

Re:Wall Street

[Jane Q. Public]

Thank you. You put it more concisely than I did.

When a large percentage -- MAYBE even the majority, I don't know -- of "investment" is no longer in the means of production, but instead is just a bunch of asshats trading fictional derivatives with each other, it puts "the economy" in danger. That's not investment. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's gambling. Plain and simple. Government-sanctioned gambling, with other peoples' money.

Fear of finance without Wall Street

[Animats]

When lower Manhattan flooded last winter, the systems behind the exchanges were just fine. None of them are actually in Manhattan. (The big NASDAQ billboard at Times Square is just advertising. There is no NASDAQ facility at that location.) NASDAQ doesn't even have a trading floor. NYSE/Euronext was prepared to shift trading control to Chicago, where they also own Arca, another exchange.

The Wall Street firms panicked at the plan for trading going on without them. They demanded that the exchanges be shut down until the firms could get back up. That was done.

Nothing to report, it was a great success!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's be serious here.

Does anyone actually think that the public would hear about anything other then "It was a great success, everything is as it should be"?

They will find holes. I'm sure certain people will be slack jawed at the shit they find. In the end, it will all be covered up because nobody wants to change anything or spend any money actually improving the system. You will hear nothing other then what a tremendous success the exercise was, because anything other then that would expose the idiocy of the people in charge of the system.

In other words, the entire story is nothing but PR bullshit. It doesn't matter what they find because you'll never hear about it.

Wall St. vs. Terrorists

[jd2112]

Honestly, I can't pick a side. Either for or against.

Quantum Dawn 2?

[AchilleTalon]

What a stupid name for such an operation!