FBI nabs programmer accused of stealing trading code
A Russian computer programmer has been arrested by the FBI, accused of stealing propriety trading code from the New York-based financial institution he used to work for.
According to an FBI affidavit, Segey Aleynikov copied proprietary code relating to the financial institution's platform for high speed, high volume stock and commodities trading, before uploading it to a server in Germany.
Aleynikov worked at the unnamed firm - which according to Reuters columnist Matthew Goldstein is Goldman Sachs - from May 2007 until June 2009 as a computer programmer in a team responsible for, among other things, developing and improving the platform.
The FBI says Aleynikov quit his $400,000 a year job last month, moving to a new company in Chicago that "intended to engage in high-volume automated trading" and that paid him around three times his old salary.
In June, whilst monitoring the uploads of data from its computer system via https, the financial institution noticed that Aleynikov's work desktop was used at least four times to transfer a total of 32 megabytes of information to an external Web site.
The bank then managed to recover a record of commands entered in the accused's desktop, known as a "bash history", relating to the Unix-based operating system used to edit and maintain code associated with the platform.
Aleynikov was arrested on 3 July as he got off a flight at Newark Airport and has since been processed on a "theft of trade secrets charge" in a criminal complaint.
The affidavit says he gave a statement confirming he copied the encrypted files from the firm's server and uploaded them to the Web site before deleting the encryption software and bash history and moving the files to his own computers.
source : Finextra: FBI nabs programmer accused of stealing trading code
A Russian computer programmer has been arrested by the FBI, accused of stealing propriety trading code from the New York-based financial institution he used to work for.
According to an FBI affidavit, Segey Aleynikov copied proprietary code relating to the financial institution's platform for high speed, high volume stock and commodities trading, before uploading it to a server in Germany.
Aleynikov worked at the unnamed firm - which according to Reuters columnist Matthew Goldstein is Goldman Sachs - from May 2007 until June 2009 as a computer programmer in a team responsible for, among other things, developing and improving the platform.
The FBI says Aleynikov quit his $400,000 a year job last month, moving to a new company in Chicago that "intended to engage in high-volume automated trading" and that paid him around three times his old salary.
In June, whilst monitoring the uploads of data from its computer system via https, the financial institution noticed that Aleynikov's work desktop was used at least four times to transfer a total of 32 megabytes of information to an external Web site.
The bank then managed to recover a record of commands entered in the accused's desktop, known as a "bash history", relating to the Unix-based operating system used to edit and maintain code associated with the platform.
Aleynikov was arrested on 3 July as he got off a flight at Newark Airport and has since been processed on a "theft of trade secrets charge" in a criminal complaint.
The affidavit says he gave a statement confirming he copied the encrypted files from the firm's server and uploaded them to the Web site before deleting the encryption software and bash history and moving the files to his own computers.
source : Finextra: FBI nabs programmer accused of stealing trading code
