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For the tl;dr - Some hyperbole plus proof that the author doesn't understand very much about how an exchange such the NYSE or LSE works, how the financial syste
by elemeno 14y ago
For the tl;dr - Some hyperbole plus proof that the author doesn't understand very much about how an exchange such the NYSE or LSE works, how the financial system around them works or physical security and thus he comes the conclusion that it would be possible.
In real life though, it just wouldn't be possible.
1) Cutting all the connections to the exchange wouldn't be so easy. You're going to have multiple connections with different physical routes out of the building to minimize the chance that the exchange goes down due to a misplaced backhoe.
2) Assuming you did cut the connections, that alone would almost certainly trip the exchange's circuit breakers and halt trading. Even if the servers located at the exchange itself didn't halt trading, all the outside entities would lose contact and so you wouldn't get any trade confirmations back.
3) Even if you could execute the trades (somehow) clearing firms would almost certainly refuse to honor the trades as being legit, and if no one else is accepting that a trade got made, then for all intents and purposes it didn't happen.
tl;dr for my bit - No.
- mikeash 14y agoOne of the more amusing lines of the movie is when Alfred says that they may be able to eventually prove fraud and get the money back. The trade was executed in the middle of a televised hostage situation and subsequent high-speed chase... why would it take more than thirty seconds to convince someone it was not legitimate and reverse it?
- Tycho 14y agoI suppose the implication was that the greedy counter parties would refuse to write-off the trades and the corrupt brokerages and regulators would let them stand. Still, when you put it like that it sounds funny.
- majormajor 14y agoI assumed Bane had found the best hackers in the world with inside knowledge of the system, as a supervillian would, and had them write something that would obfuscate the origin of the trades in the "paper" trail. Basically anyone who lost money that day would blame the break-in, some of them probably did just as stupid stuff as it looked like Wayne did. So how would they know Wayne's complaint was legitimate? What didn't make sense to me was that they were able to continue the program's execution after the outside connection was cut off—if they didn't need to physically be there the whole time, why'd they need to go in guns blazing? Heck, even if they need to be there, why not just slip the program to someone on the inside along with a hefty bribe or threat or both? Other than to give Batman someone to chase for plot purposes, that is... I'm surprised how much more discussion that plot point generated than the magic identity eraser, though.
- mdanger 14y agoI had figured they needed to be there in person to get past the fingerprint scanner. Also, Bane's plan centers around presenting himself as a champion of the people -- I had figured he went in guns blazing for the psychological value of the thing (not to mention the possibility of drawing Wayne/Batman out of hiding). Exchange security just being compromised probably wouldn't be a big enough deal for most people (the police officer outside who makes the comment about his money being in his mattress certainly doesn't seem to care!)
- elemeno 14y agoIt's pretty hard to obfuscate the paper trail when there needs to be a counterparty and the trade needs to be attributed to one person. There's also rather a lot of work that's gone into verifying that a trade has come from the person it claims to have come from.
- andylei 14y ago1. if there was a hostage situation inside the exchange. they'd stop trading for all securities pretty much instantaneously. nobody's trades after the start of the hostage situation would be honored. 2. the exchange's data centers aren't even on wall street! most of the data centers are in weehawken, nj. breaking into the NYSE would be about as effective as breaking into a bank of america.
- sausagefeet 14y agoFox said that, not Alfred.
- dave_sullivan 14y agoWell... never let the truth get in the way of a good story...
- anamax 14y ago> 1) Cutting all the connections to the exchange wouldn't be so easy. Is "the exchange" in the same building as the trading floor? I don't know either way, but would be surprised if the exchange and the trading floor were in the same building. I'd be surprised because the trading floor must be in Manhattan for social reasons (because people go there) while the exhange can be "anywhere". Given the price of space in Manhattan....
- trafficlight 14y agohttp://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219668/In_fortified_data_center_NYSE_runs_gated_trading_cloud http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219668/In_fortified_... This would suggest that the NYSE datacenter is not in the same building as the trading floor. And, I would assume that there are more than one of these such datacenters.
- skorgu 14y agoThe NYSE datacenter is in Mahwah New Jersey: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/06/30/nyses-data-fortress-powering-the-financial-cloud/ http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/06/30/nyses...
- fragmede 14y ago> Given the price of space in Manhattan.... ...HFT guys pay very expensive colo rates to be in a datacenter that is milliseconds closer to wherever the time is stamped on a trade.
- anamax 14y ago> HFT guys pay very expensive colo rates to be in a datacenter that is milliseconds closer to wherever the time is stamped on a trade Yes, but that doesn't constrain the location of the exchange. The exchange (and all of the HFT colos) could be in Texas and the trading floor in NYC. (There's no reason to do HFT from the trading floor.)
- 14y ago
- DennisP 14y agoDamn, there goes my business model.