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Comment by the-swa | Hacker News Reader

Security flaws in financial institutions has got to be one of my greatest fears. Wall street doesn't understand software[0][1] yet they rely so heavily on it with algorithmic trading[2]. The day that something goes terribly wrong, they're going to have no idea what happened...

[0] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/09/six-year-old-st/ [1] http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/09/michael-lewis-gol... [2] http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_o...

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Wall street doesn't understand software

Could we stop with the vapid generalities? Obviously some people on Wall Street don't, but that doesn't mean it's universal.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/09/six-year-old-st/

Hmm, a 5 year old story abut a trading mistake caused by human error, where someone didn't realize that an old story was no longer current because of a weakness in Google News's crawling procedure? This has nothing to do with software on wall Street and doesn't support your argument in the least. I think you should go back and reread it.

With exchanges, the cure is quite simple: stop breaking bad trades. If Goldman had to eat every fat finger error, the would adopt better procedures for avoiding them..

That might be a cure for Goldman fat fingers, but it won't be a cure for an exchange's security problems. If an entity gets a bad trade due to fraudulent security violations, It seems fair for them to expect the exchange to bust that trade.

Sure, I'll buy that.

I think it is fair to say that 99% of the problems are on the client side... at least, that is how I made my bonus ;)

I always loved it when 10@100 became 100@10.

That is the #1 part of the last Batman movie that annoyed me. "ohh he's broke because ... of an attack on the stock exchange during which a giant totally weird trade was made".

A solid amount of suspension of disbelief is necessary to enjoy Christopher Nolan movies. It's quite awkward, actually, but it works because people love a good story more than reality (, which is quite relevant to entrepreneurship / pitching! :-) )

You could say the same thing about the energy grid, our military, etc. Not that you are wrong, but Wall Street melting down is way easier to back out of than a nuclear plant.

Agreed, but it would also vary by the nature of the hackers' intent. With the current global economy, taking down Wall Street would create an immediate impact worldwide and would have long term rippling effects. Hacking into and disrupting a power grid could do the same, but is heavily dependent upon location and timing, no? Maybe I just don't know enough about how the power grid works.

Granted, if we're talking about physically destroying infrastructure as opposed to just hacking, then I'd have to agree with you.

The electricity grid is also extremely complicated system that many people don't understand. With any complex system, it grows to beyond the knowledge of the people working in it.

One thing to note is that many of the critical components on the electrical grid is controlled over the network. When I used to build tools for the electricity trading desk, we were handling market bids/asks and scheduling of the power plants.

Here's an example of the stuff that we were dealing with. This is the real time settlement point prices for ERCOT (the grid network in Texas): http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_spp

We had systems that lay out prices that we were willing to turn on and ramp up power plants. If prices hit a certain point, we were committed to delivering that power. We made these decisions based on economics of the power plant (gas plant vs nuclear vs wind) and other factors (such as weather , time of day, whether the Cowboys were playing that day).

Anyways, my point is that all these systems are interconnected and rather complex. It doesn't take much for an error in one place to bring down a major part of the system.

Take a look at the 2003 Blackout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

As with any engineering, you're never going to factor away all the breaks. You need to build a system that assume things will break and ensure that it's not catastrophic.

Also, I don't think it's fair to say that Wall Street doesn't understand software. There are some very smart people doing solid engineering there. Neither one of the footnotes that you had in your post support your statement that Wall St doesn't understand software.

Not to challenge your point, that is only true of certain nuclear power plant designs. There are nuclear power plants that cannot melt down, or can be turned off like a switch. BWR limitations aren't true across the spectrum. :)

I agree with you but your sources are terrible. Google misdating a news article or the Goldman Sachs incident don't really prove they are careless with their sensitive systems. I don't know if they are or not, but the fact that they have a pretty good record so far and that there is billions in incentives not to screw up says a lot.

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