[SystemSafety] How to loose $460M with some dead code

Peter Bernard Ladkin ladkin at rvs.uni-bielefeld.de
Sat Nov 2 21:07:03 CET 2013


Good spot, Derek!

It obviously wasn't dead code. It was zombie code, resurrected dead code. SEC could have issued their ruling more appropriately on Nov. 1.

I had been wondering what had gone on and this says it all. However, I thought Knight Capital had gone out of business because of this incident. Apparently not so. The fine of $12m seems purely pro forma. I take it the SEC figured that the company had punished itself enough.

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, University of Bielefeld and Causalis Limited

On 1 Nov 2013, at 21:17, Derek M Jones <derek at knosof.co.uk> wrote:

> All,
> 
> I suspect that most members of this list have not been following
> the tail of Knight Capital’s rather odd way of loosing $460m via
> algorithmic trading.
> 
> It turns out to have been caused by some unused/dead code
> coming back to life (the technical stuff starts around para 13):
> http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2013/34-70694.pdf
> 
> -- 
> Derek M. Jones                  tel: +44 (0) 1252 520 667
> Knowledge Software Ltd          blog:shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com
> Software analysis               http://www.knosof.co.uk
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