FBI Arrests Former Trader For Stealing High Frequency Trading Code
Note: It's in the wild folks (or part of it), and being used for 'good'! See: http://publicdissentiment.org/
Public Dissentiment is an online tool that helps protesters negatively impact the price of a publicly traded company’s stock by communicating with algorithmic market makers. By using the same algorithmic sentiment analysis techniques as financial trading bots, the app generates posts for social media that link to news stories that will be viewed negatively by algorithmic market makers.
If enough of these posts are generated in the same time frame, uncertainty about the targeted company’s stock will be created, temporarily affecting the price of the stock, consequently making the company’s shareholders aware of the public’s negative sentiment towards them.
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Almost eight years after Sergey Aleynikov made HFT a watercooler topic after the former Goldman engineer was arrested (and incarcerated, then released, then charged again, then found innocent, and finally found guilty yet again) for allegedly stealing Goldman's proprietary HFT code, a trading software developer was charged last Thursday by the acting U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Joon Kim, for attempting to steal quantitative trading code from Susquehanna International Group, a relatively secretive financial firm based in the Philadelphia area that specializes in making markets for options.
A 44-year-old native Russian, Dmitry Sazonov worked for Susquehanna since 2004 as a software engineer and, by implication, trader. He was arrested in the lobby of Susquehanna’s New York offices last Wednesday by FBI agents, Forbes first reported.
According to the complaint, Sazonov "attempted to steal valuable proprietary computer code that took his employer years to develop." Sazonov was accused ot taking elaborate steps to conceal his attempted theft, including camouflaging pieces of source code within harmless-looking draft emails on his work computer.
Specifically, the code which Sazonov was accused of stealing was linked to an updated trading platform Susquehanna has been developing for years to generate exchange and market orders. Sazonov started his effort to steal the proprietary trading code in February, the complaint says, after learning his supervisor had resigned.
Prosecutors claim that Sazonov, fearing he would be fired, downloaded the source code to his company computer and deployed a computer program that may have used steganography to break up data and hide data within other files, including personal tax and immigration documents. Sazonov attached zip files containing the quant trading code to two saved emails addressed to a personal account, but he was fired and immediately escorted out of Susquehanna’s New York offices in February before he had a chance to send the emails.
Then, according to the complaint, on multiple occasions following his termination Sazonov contacted individuals employed by Susqyehanna seeking the return of computer files on his desktop computer, which he claimed were personal documents. Then, last Wednesday, April 12, 2017, the feds say Sazonov showed up in the lobby of Susquehanna’s New York offices thinking he was going to have them returned. There, an FBI agent pretending to be a Susquehanna employee handed Sazonov a disk and he was arrested.
As an interesting aside in the complaint we read the following:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-18/fbi-arrests-former-susquehanna-trad...
This is rather brilliant. (at least the public marketing of the concept) Based on my observation of Bitcoin/Altcoins this has been deployed for 2-3 years and is really 'good' at redistributing wealth from naive anarcho-cypto believers and giving it to capital owners. On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 10:46:09AM -0700, Razer wrote:
Note: It's in the wild folks (or part of it), and being used for 'good'!
See: http://publicdissentiment.org/
Public Dissentiment is an online tool that helps protesters negatively impact the price of a publicly traded company???s stock by communicating with algorithmic market makers. By using the same algorithmic sentiment analysis techniques as financial trading bots, the app generates posts for social media that link to news stories that will be viewed negatively by algorithmic market makers.
If enough of these posts are generated in the same time frame, uncertainty about the targeted company???s stock will be created, temporarily affecting the price of the stock, consequently making the company???s shareholders aware of the public???s negative sentiment towards them.
=======================
===================
Almost eight years after Sergey Aleynikov made HFT a watercooler topic after the former Goldman engineer was arrested (and incarcerated, then released, then charged again, then found innocent, and finally found guilty yet again) for allegedly stealing Goldman's proprietary HFT code, a trading software developer was charged last Thursday by the acting U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Joon Kim, for attempting to steal quantitative trading code from Susquehanna International Group, a relatively secretive financial firm based in the Philadelphia area that specializes in making markets for options.
A 44-year-old native Russian, Dmitry Sazonov worked for Susquehanna since 2004 as a software engineer and, by implication, trader. He was arrested in the lobby of Susquehanna???s New York offices last Wednesday by FBI agents, Forbes first reported.
According to the complaint, Sazonov "attempted to steal valuable proprietary computer code that took his employer years to develop." Sazonov was accused ot taking elaborate steps to conceal his attempted theft, including camouflaging pieces of source code within harmless-looking draft emails on his work computer.
Specifically, the code which Sazonov was accused of stealing was linked to an updated trading platform Susquehanna has been developing for years to generate exchange and market orders. Sazonov started his effort to steal the proprietary trading code in February, the complaint says, after learning his supervisor had resigned.
Prosecutors claim that Sazonov, fearing he would be fired, downloaded the source code to his company computer and deployed a computer program that may have used steganography to break up data and hide data within other files, including personal tax and immigration documents. Sazonov attached zip files containing the quant trading code to two saved emails addressed to a personal account, but he was fired and immediately escorted out of Susquehanna???s New York offices in February before he had a chance to send the emails.
Then, according to the complaint, on multiple occasions following his termination Sazonov contacted individuals employed by Susqyehanna seeking the return of computer files on his desktop computer, which he claimed were personal documents. Then, last Wednesday, April 12, 2017, the feds say Sazonov showed up in the lobby of Susquehanna???s New York offices thinking he was going to have them returned. There, an FBI agent pretending to be a Susquehanna employee handed Sazonov a disk and he was arrested.
As an interesting aside in the complaint we read the following:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-18/fbi-arrests-former-susquehanna-trad...
On 04/18/2017 12:33 PM, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
Based on my observation of Bitcoin/Altcoins this has been deployed for 2-3 years and is really 'good' at redistributing wealth from naive anarcho-cypto believers and giving it to capital owners.
Can you explain what you're trying to say here? Are you saying PublicDissentiment is owned by the financial industry or works in favor of the corporations it might be used against? You made your statement, a vague diatribe. Let's see some facts. I prefer facts. Rr
participants (2)
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Razer -
Troy Benjegerdes