[Cryptography] from CNBC: "Cybersecurity firm says large hedge fund attacked"

[Perry E. Metzger]

On Thu, 19 Jun 2014 13:58:28 -0400 "Perry E. Metzger"
<perry at piermont.com> wrote:
> Quoting:
> 
> "In an audacious and sophisticated attack, cybercriminals acting in
> late 2013 installed a malicious computer program on the servers of a
> large hedge fund, crippling its high-speed trading strategy and
> sending information about its trades to unknown offsite computers."
> 
> Unfortunately, the article is otherwise largely content free.
> 
> http://www.cnbc.com/id/101770396

This comment was sent out of band to me by a friend who is highly
familiar with the inside of hedge funds:

   “It’s implausible that a high frequency trading shop failed to
   notice _hundreds of microseconds to single digit milliseconds_ of
   delays until such a time as their strategy became ‘ineffective’ --
   unless they have a significantly different definition of high
   frequency than the rest of the industry employs.  The game is lost
   in nanoseconds these days, not microseconds, and certainly not
   milliseconds.

   Furthermore, they seem to conflate high frequency trading
   operations with the firm’s traditional order entry system and make
   the outlandish claim that somehow the attackers were making money
   on the diverted trade information of the high frequency strategy.”

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com