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Worms Security

Computer Virus Fells Russian Stock Exchange 133

Posted by Zonk from the doesn't-pick-up-after-itself dept.
azav wrote to mention the New Scientist story detailing the computer virus that brought down the Russian Stock Exchange. From the article: "As the world waited for one computer virus to strike on Friday, another wriggled its way into the Russian stock exchange and knocked it offline. Computer experts had warned that 3 February could bring gloom for many as a computer virus called Nyxem was scheduled to start deleting files on machines it had infected."
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Computer Virus Fells Russian Stock Exchange More

Computer Virus Fells Russian Stock Exchange

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  • stupid... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by advocate_one ( 662832 ) on Saturday February 04, 2006 @04:29AM (#14640725)
    we have a testing machine... connected to the internet of all things... AND connected to the same network the production system is running on... and evidently it's running on ms-windows...

    • Re:stupid... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by putko ( 753330 ) on Saturday February 04, 2006 @05:29AM (#14640844) Homepage Journal
      Standard practice at banks is two physically separated networks -- production & test.

      I don't know why the exchange would be any different.

      But things at banks and exchanges are very ninja-rigged. E.g. build an automated trading client that sumits multiple trades a second and the exchange is likely to ask you to do some rate-limiting -- their systems won't be able to handle it.
      • This is Russia. The days of it being a superpower are long gone. Nowadays it's really more suitable to think of it as being more like Spain, given it's wealth and threat to other countries. What happens to its stock exchange is neither here nor there.
    • we have a testing machine... connected to the internet of all things... AND connected to the same network the production system is running on... and evidently it's running on ms-windows...

      Yes that sounds like a bad idea, but what can they do about it? The article is not very clear, but it looks like any other office to me:

      Dmitry Shatsky, vice president of the Russian Trading System (RTS) said in a statement that a virus had infected a single computer used to test trading software that was connected to t

  • Wargames (Score:4, Funny)

    by digital-madman ( 860873 ) on Saturday February 04, 2006 @04:54AM (#14640776)
    Virus? I wanted to play Global Thermonuclear War....

  • Russia has a stock exchange? (Score:4, Funny)

    by heatdeath ( 217147 ) on Saturday February 04, 2006 @04:59AM (#14640786)
    And they use computers? This is excellent news!
  • Isn't it spelled Nymex, not Nyxem. New York egnahcxE Merchantile just doesn't make much sense as an acronym.

    Oh well, I guess virus writers are getting dumber by the day if they can't even spell their targets' name properly.

  • the obvious response (Score:4, Insightful)

    by know1 ( 854868 ) on Saturday February 04, 2006 @05:04AM (#14640802)
    i know there will be people saying "oh my, running windows, sucks to be you" but if you look past the trollishness of these posts they actually have a point in this case. running windows as anything mission critical is stupid, it's a desktop system at heart, and an unstable one at that. running the bloody stock exchange on it is suicidal. theres always some dick who opens that dodgy email, so if your net is that important run the mission critical servers at least on some flavour of unix
    • In every detail.

    • Groupthink (was: the obvious response?) (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Gary W. Longsine ( 124661 ) on Saturday February 04, 2006 @09:53AM (#14641353) Homepage Journal
      running windows as anything mission critical is stupid, it's a desktop system at heart, and an unstable one at that. running the bloody stock exchange on it is suicidal.
      Although that might be a reasonable and rational statement on the surface, the fact is that Windows systems are now at the heart of critical systems everywhere. Although I'm surprised to see them playing such a critical roll in a stock exchange, I'm only a little tiny bit surprised, and mostly ashamed of my own instinctive reaction.

      When these decisions are being made, you may feel as though you're stuck in a slow-motion sequence in a horror film, leaping to save someone, someone very beautiful that you could care about deeply if only you knew them a little better, someone who doesn't deserve to be eaten alive by a vicious monster, or maybe they do, but you just don't know it, anyway you don't know it and you didn't thnk of that until later, much later, after years of therapy in fact, all the while, leaping in futile slow motion to save a fatefully doomed monster victim, certain of their inevitable doom, crying "Nooooooo!" at the top of your lungs to no avail, due to the slow-motion and your voice having been run through an under-water pitch-reducing distortion filter. Yet another heroine devoured by the monster, just out of arms reach... You think to yourself, "If only... If only... If only I hadn't been stuck on slow motion..." when suddenly realize you're not alone, and you're thinking out loud, reliving the nightmare.

      At this point a friend interrupts your navel gazing to say, "The monster would have eaten you too. Don't feel so guilty." whereas the cliche movie therapist would say, "How does that make you feel?" If you hear the former response, you're probably in meatspace, the latter, and you're still either dreaming or you really are a character in a horror film, and the monster is about to come crashing up through the floor or in through the window and eat your therapist.

      Windows systems can be found:

      • running U.S. Navy warships
      • running medical imaging, monitoring, and other life-critical devices
      • running train control systems
      • running nuclear power plants
      • running ATM networks and other aspects of the banking system

      Although it might be true that no rational and informed person would set up such critical systems on a system with the stability and security track record of Windows, remember that such decisions are typically made by a bureaucracy, not by rational and informed individuals. The field of psychology has studied this phenomenon and call it "groupthink".

      Groupthink [abacon.com]
      Wikipedia on Groupthink [wikipedia.org]
      A First Look at Communication Theory (Ch. 18, 3rd Edition) [afirstlook.com]

      • Regarding the US Navy warships,
        1. Newport News Shipbuilding is awarded a contract for the first of the new "Ronald Reagan" class of aircraft carriers.
        2. Bill Gates gets out his check book and instantly becomes the second largest stockholder (owner) in Newport News Shipbuilding.
        3. Newport News Shipbuilding selects Microsoft to develop the warfare systems. Microsoft, a company with no experience in warfare systems, and a reputation for unstable, insecure software, will base the Ronald
      • Windows systems can be found:

        running U.S. Navy warships
        running medical imaging, monitoring, and other life-critical devices
        running train control systems
        running nuclear power plants
        running ATM networks and other aspects of the banking system

        What, exactly, have you proven here?
        The systems you have named are, by any reasonable standard, performing very, very well.

        • Agreed, in general they tend to work very well. Like the Space Shuttle -- which doesn't involve Windows so the example may allow you to see past the particulars of this incident, to my point.

          Note that one of the groupthink articles I mentioned discusses a Space Shuttle accident (Windows not implicated). A characteristic of that event was that there were plenty of warning signs that were ignored, "hey maybe it's not such a good idea to have a jet of burning gas flaming out of the joints of the solid roc
    • You are assuming that they are running Windows based only upon the breakin seems to fit the pattern. However, nowhere could I find any reference to the OS employed. Did I miss it?

      Other OSs are not immune to security breaches. Moreover, I am surprised any securities trading firm would use anything other than a Unix like OS. Hence, if Windows were really used it would be a significant portion of the story that was neglected, i.e.: "how did it get there?".

      Does anyone know with certainty that Windows (w

      • You are assuming that they are running Windows based only upon the breakin seems to fit the pattern. However, nowhere could I find any reference to the OS employed.

        According to this document [www.rts.ru] (PDF) describing the system:

        The Connection, Online and Scheme objects have OLE controls which make it possible to use these objects in visual development environments such as PowerBuilder or Visual Basic. Outwardly they differ from the above-mentioned objects only in the DO suffix in the name (ConnectionDO, OnlineDO,

        • Thanks for the reference, it certainly appears that this is a strictly Windows system.

          Just read elsewhere that in Eastern Europe (and I guess Russia) FOSS lags due to inertia and distrust of authority (and implicitly lack of knowledge). Look up Ester Dyson - says MS puts effort in training programs there, hence, their success.

    • it's a desktop system at heart

      Um, no...

      NT Server just like Windows 2003 server has a shared code base with the desktop counterparts, but they were NOT designed as desktop only OSes.

      In fact NT's dominance was first felt in the server world, before Linux was doing much more than making Linus Giggle and collect porn via ftp.

      The reason Windows has been at the root of so much security concern is that Microsoft tried to please everyone, as people bitched and said they were screwing over business that made softwa
      • "In fact NT's dominance was first felt in the server world, before Linux was doing much more than making Linus Giggle and collect porn via ftp." i'm sorry mate but i just can't read the rest of your comment through these tears of laughter. for a start, i didn't even mention linux, i mentioned unix which has been kicking windows ass for a long time via the various flavours of bsd. sounds like somebody has a bit of a raw nerve there....oh a few lines later...blah blah... look we all know that the server editi
        • i'm sorry mate but i just can't read the rest of your comment through these tears of laughter. for a start, i didn't even mention linux, i mentioned unix which has been kicking windows ass for a long time via the various flavours of bsd. sounds like somebody has a bit of a raw nerve there....oh a few lines later...blah blah... look we all know that the server editions of windows and the desktop editions are the same core parts, please stop making a fool of yourself. i don't care about "back in the day" even
          • for your information mate, i run a windows box, behind a linux firewall. just last week the mofo crashed and BSOD on every boot until a fresh install. it also killed my entire hard drives data (booted from a knoppix cd, that usually lets me back up before the re-install.
            this means i have lost all my music that i had recorded. music i have written. beats and basslines i might never recreate (although i know the guitar parts). if it weren'tfor the fact that most music software on linux is not a patch on the
            • for your information mate, i run a windows box, behind a linux firewall. just last week the mofo crashed and BSOD on every boot until a fresh install. it also killed my entire hard drives data (booted from a knoppix cd, that usually lets me back up before the re-install.
              this means i have lost all my music that i had recorded. music i have written. beats and basslines i might never recreate (although i know the guitar parts). if it weren'tfor the fact that most music software on linux is not a patch on the w
              • i dual boot on this machine and have for a long time ( i like the hydrogen drum machine on linux, only decent usable piece of music software) and over the years have had a few crashes/ data losses. every single time, it has been under windows and if you would read one of my earlier posts, i said that windows is unstable for anything other than mundane web browsing. which i'm sure is what these 5000 machines are doing, maybe a little excell? i'm sure they aren't running reason. those machines aren't being pu
                • every single time, it has been under windows

                  1) Go look up coincidence

                  2) Do not use FAT or FAT32 partitions, only use NTFS for Windows.

                  3) Stop viewing Windows through Win9x colored glasses, the NT line of Windows and the modern WindowsXP is dang solid, more than a lot of people that hate MS would even like to admit.

                  and Take Care...

                  • listen cocksucker, i'm not using FAT at all, purely ntfs, secondly, if you can't agree to end this dispute like a gentleman fuck you.
                    i don't call something a coincidence when it happens repeatedly. please do not bother me with your flatulent presence by way of writing again.
                  • ok, i admit that was a little rude to say the least...i have had a bit of a night on the electric soup if you know what i mean, but the thing that really made my blood boil was this
                    "every single time, it has been under windows 1) Go look up coincidence"
                    come on now, if a bunch of scientists were in a lab and kept getting the same results, (different from the control group) time and time again, and one of the scientists said "oh nevermind that, that's just coincidence", what do you think the other scient
                    • you seem to be comparing windows 98 to windows xp. i'm comparing windows xp to linux. being misunderstood can be very frustrating

                      I was pretty sure you weren't comparing Win9x, but a lot of people that follow these posts get off into that mindset, so I was directinng that more in general than at you.

                      if a bunch of scientists were in a lab and kept getting the same results

                      I agree, but you see, our company has a couple of test labs, where we throw all kinds of senerios and crap at various OSes and software fro
                    • you make a lot of good points there, duly noted and understood. again, sorry for being a dick. see you in another thread, take care yourself

  • But Russia has good hackers... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdot@spamgoe ... minus herbivore> on Saturday February 04, 2006 @05:16AM (#14640824) Homepage
    This is ironic, as Russia has arguably some of the best computer security experts in the world. Those that know how to exploit the holes can also advise how to secure against threats. I wonder if it's due to talented Russians leaving the country to work abroad?
  • it's terrible, I hear the ruble is down to $0.000001 again...
    • That's nothing. Tdwaterhouse.ca was reporting that 1 Canadian dollar was up to $57,580.00US. I'm going to buy Greenbacks in the morning if it's still like that, then purchase New York state and Nevada. I call dibs on Texas too.

  • You let M$ near your cash? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Saturday February 04, 2006 @05:23AM (#14640836) Journal
    Why connect a consumer operating system to any part of a financial hub?
    Did someone want to play a game?
    Download a funny clip?

    Did you learn nothing from the cold war?
    http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/02/071 9247 [slashdot.org]

    M$ is the Trojan horse, you add it to your systems and anyone can just walk in.

  • Stock exchange gives YOU virus!
  • I use Linux. I don't have viruses. It is simple? Isn't obvious?
    They have virus in big financial stuff. They are using Windows for it. They are dumb people.
    It's their fault. It isn't fault of virus author. It isn't fault of Microsoft or Bill Gates. It's fault of dumb people!
    • Noone would Attack linux! That would be like stabbing santy claus!!
      Sigh.... its always the dumb people. when will they learn??
    • Good point. But why are there so many dumb people making money off of the MS enterprise?
    • Not the fault of the virus author?! Sure, they should have done more to stop this happening but the effects of a virus are ALWAYS the fault of the author.

      Remind me to stab you in the face if we ever meet - don't worry, it'll be your fault for not wearing a crash helmet.

  • Is that M$ knew about this a long time ago, yet stood back and did nothing to help. Except for their premium customers, of course. It needs to be taken into account that there should be some kind of responsibility for these actions.

    Monetary damage has been inflicted, and the makers of the software had all the tools and knowledge to prevent this happening.

    If you made a car, and you knew that there was a flaw that caused it to stop working, you have a responsibility to recall the car / fix it for free.

    The s

    • I'm tired of seing these posts, so I'm going to slap a little reality check on here...

      If I was MS, you know what I'd say to you? Fuck you. What are you going to do about it? Sue us? Hell, we sponsored half of the laws regulating the industry that we basically created, sue away to your hearts content. Class action lawsuit? Wooo, scary, heres lets say, hmm, a hundred million divided between our global customer base. The ones that haven't pirated our products. What will you do now? Blow up our software depar

      • Re:My beef (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Of course, Russian mafia boss who lost money today might say just the same thing. Send Viktor and Grigori to say hello to the Microsoft board.
    • The liability questions that you raise are probably less clear-cut than they first appear. Much of the actual exploitation of which the industry is aware exploits vulnerabilities which have been long patched. Others have suggested that home users be held accountable (e.g. liable) for evil deeds done to other systems by their presumably unpatched home PC systems. However, when a vulnerable system can be 0wn3d in less than two minutes of exposure to the internet, it's clear that home user responsibility i
    • Slashdot always has nonsense posts, and in this case it's nothing new. Had Microsoft released the patch and something happened, you guys would be bitching about how stupid they were to install the patch without testing it extensively on such important systesm. When they don't, you bitch that they didn't. Make up your mind
      • I fail to see how it's a nonsense post. The bottom line is, MS knew well in advance that this was a big problem, and acknowledged it, had a mechanism in place to fix the problem, and didn't. This is different from some random virus hitting en masse and doing damage.

        Saying that X people pirate the software isn't a counter-argument - it's a seperate issue. If MS want to lock out people illegally using their software, there are ways. They should however remain committed to ensuring the the users of their s

  • Obligatory... (Score:4, Funny)

    by David Horn ( 772985 ) <david&pocketgamer,org> on Saturday February 04, 2006 @08:46AM (#14641188) Homepage
    In Russia, stock exchange fells you!
  • With the amount of money invested in stock and the speed at which disaster can strike companies/people when a Stcok Market goes down, why on earth are they running an OS that is as vulnerable and unreliable as Windoze?
  • I bet this is the _last_ major virus exploit in Russia. Once a few nerds are sent to a Gulag, they'll go back to attacking the US miliatry. I tend to believe the Russian penal system, especially crimes against the economy, will be dealt with a bit harder than what happened to say, oh, Mr. Mitnik.

  • 1. As F-Secure writes, Nyxem deletes files with extenstions: DOC, XLS, PPT, ZIP, RAR, PDF, MDB.
    2. News said that deleting file was the problem.
    Ok so only one extension of those can be used on a file, that can be a crucial file, that system has to have to keep running. But PLEASE! TELL ME, THAT THEIR STOCK EXCHANGE IS'T BASED ON .MDB FILES! PLEASE!
    • Nah, its probably Informix or something (MICEX used it).

      The issue is that the trading may use a sophisticated database, but there is still a lot of stuff going in the background where they use .doc files, .pdfs and .zips. This is all linked to the end of day processing at the exchange and is also vital. Note that the backend is usually *ux but the frontends tend to be Wintel and thus are vulnerable.

      • This is generally what you get for reinventing the wheel, if you wish. Difference in egislation, picuarities of clearing system, depository/regitrar system -- and yu can't easily put any of the western exchange systems in place. Couple that with distrust/paranoia and there you go -- *all* of Russian major exchanges are indeed very much Microsoft-friendly. It is piculiar in more ways than one -- there's a planty of good talent around, but very little in UNIX area, I would argue. Kids that played with Lin
        • I was more involved with the currency exchanges (they also trade shares), They tended towards HP-UX with Informix. The same applied, I believe to the DCC (Depository Clearing Company), which served RTS, MICEX and so on. When I stopped working so much with Russia, thre was a big movement towards LinTel on the server side as the HP servers were expensive to run. The joke is that a lot of the Lintel platforms were deployed by stealth.

          I know that there is a big project on to reform the depository/clearing sys

  • In Russia, stock exchange runs Microsoft!

  • he used to go by the name of Zero Cool, but I think he calls himself Crash Override now!
  • Is there anything to dissuade me of my idea that Nyxem could have been hyped by Mikrat to cover this RTS strike? Anything at all? The world focuses on Nyxem (which, in effect, didn't happen) and then the RTS goes down. Seems a bit too coordinated to me. "Nyxem" seems to be an anagram for NYMEX (New York Mercantile EXchange), a securities market, not entirely dissimilar from RTS. Perhaps the NYMEX people should look out for this being a possibility on their system(s).

    I swear I'm not a conspiracy theorist,

  • Headline wrong (Score:3, Funny)

    by J. Random Luser ( 824671 ) on Saturday February 04, 2006 @07:40PM (#14643571)
    It should read: Russian Exchange trades in Computer Viruses

    acording to this story [arstechnica.com] on Arstechnica. Altho' I'm getting a 500 error on their eweek reference...

  • I develop trading software for RTS (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For obvious reasons I am posting anonymously.

    I am heading a group of developers building interoperability solutions for an RTS subsidiary - Saint Petersburg Exchange. Before we were able to connect our testing server to the RTS's internal network we had to sign about three pounds of papers, certify the server and the network. Among other things, the server that we were allowed to connect to their network was absolutely forbidden to connect to any other network (even to our firewalled up the wazoo intranet).

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