Re: reuters: hacker jailed for stock manipulation

["scotartt" <scot@systemx.autonomous.org>]

[: hacktivism :]

> well obviously the words 'criminal' 'thief' 'hacker' and 'hacktivism' mean
> different things to different people.....Whether or not he/they had control
> of the system is left unspecified....and I never claimed that it was an
> example of hacktivism. It simply seized my fancy when I first read it this
> morning and had thoughts of world markets going crazy because of hackers
> doing hacktivism for political reasons on N30. Is it going to happen? No.
> Could it happen? Probably not, but I'm not the best person to make that
> call. Can I still fantasize about it happening and hopefully use it as a

Actually, having direct experience in this area, no, it won't, its just a
fantasy. ;)

Most futures trading systems run 'risk management' which means if you try
to place a trade for 1,000,000 contracts it will tell you to 'fuck off' as
the clearer knows perfectly well you cannot front even the initial margin
let alone the risk associated to you if the trade goes bad.

You would need to place this sort of volume in order to manipulate price to
any significant degree.

However, you could do it if you e.g. sourced significant capital a la a
hedge fund. but then, what's the difference between you and the hedge fund?
very little, no-one really likes them even in the market.

If you could install some subtle hack on the systems at the 'Merc' that
did some subtle price manipulation __over a long period of time__ you could
inflict a bit of damage. but -- most importantly -- to whom?? who knows.
you are just as likely to make LTCM a heap of money and send some poor
third world country broke rather than the opposite. it depends just what
'position' each player has staked itself on. and to cause it to collapse??
I don't think so, we are talking 100 of billions of dollars a day in
liquidity that you are up against -- even a 100 million dollars is puny
compared to that amount of liquid funds moving against you.

regs
scot


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