Posted on 01/10/2011 8:51:35 PM PST by FromLori
Side-channel attack on high-frequency trading networks could net a hacker millions of dollars in seconds -- and leave everyone else much poorer
High-frequency trading networks, which complete stock market transactions in microseconds, are vulnerable to manipulation by hackers who can inject tiny amounts of latency into them. By doing so, they can subtly change the course of trading and pocket profits of millions of dollars in just a few seconds, says Rony Kay, a former IBM research fellow and founder of cPacket Networks, a Silicon Valley firm that develops chips and technologies for network monitoring and traffic analysis.
Kay, an Israeli-born computer scientist and one-time Intel engineering manager, says the root of the problem is the increasing speed of networks; as they get faster and faster, our ability to actually understand events taking place within them isn't keeping up. Network monitoring technology can detect perturbations in network traffic happening in milliseconds, but when changes occur in microseconds, they're not visible, he says.
cPacket has developed a proof of concept showing that these side-channel attacks can be used to create tiny delays in the transmission of market data and trades. By manipulating specific trading activities by several microseconds, an attacker could gain unfair trading advantage. And because the operation occurs outside the range of monitoring technology, it would remain invisible. "We believe that such techniques pose a substantial risk of creating unfair trading, if used by the wrong people," Kay says.
(A side-channel attacker looks at indirect information related to the computer -- the electromagnetic emanations from screens or keyboards, for example -- to determine what is going on in the machine. )
Latency threatens other applications as well
(Excerpt) Read more at infoworld.com ...
This is why the pleabes are encouraged to hold and go long
You know to bring stability to grand opera market
Ping
I was just reading this - thanks.
Don’t worry, if any of the HFT firms were to lose money, the exchange would just cancel the trades. It’s not like their trading with their own money anyways.
Given that the government hasn’t seemed to care when markets have been corrupted through outright fraud, why should they be expected to care about this sort of manipulation?
Here is my take on this.
HFT is a fraud, and should be illegal.
This would be nothing more than one thief stealing from another.
This is why financial regulation is bs. There is always a way to sidestep it.
OK, how do you define high frequency trading? How is a ban on high frequency trading (a mandate not to be able to sell or buy) any different from the government say which heath insurance plan you must or may not buy?
I’m going to backtrack on this comment. Did not read this was related to hacking.
Somehow it seems wrong to grant trading advantage based on who has the absolutely fastest network or connections. Establishing minimum time quantums for internet-based trades would get around this problem, but might create others.
You fix the problem by taxing every trade at a nominal rate. Enough to make it not worthwhile to shave hundreths of a penny profit off of trades made with HFT but small enough to not affect legitimate trades.
The HFT traders are just (glorified hackers) toll collectors looking to skim a fraction of a percent off the overall market volume by front running. Hilarious that they would be hacked and some one skim off of them
IIRC Goldman was making .5 billion a year off HFT
But there are smaller more nimble firms making out great too
I only wonder how long this kind of thing has been going on.
Exactly but will never happen because Wall Street bribes the right DC hacks
.5 bil a year? My recollection is more like 100 million A DAY.
They is? What way is they to sidestep it?
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