Fergie's Tech Blog

Hacking Capitalism

Kelly Jackson Higgins writes on Forbes.com:

You'd think electronic financial trading would be extra secure, but not so much: One of the most popular application-layer protocols in the financial industry leaves these money applications wide open to attack, according to researchers.

The application-layer FIX (financial information exchange) protocol is used by financial services firms, stock exchanges, and investment banks for automated financial trading. But apps written to the protocol can be vulnerable to denial-of-service, session hijacking, and man-in-the middle attacks over the Internet, as well as an attacker actually able to "watch" the transactions, says David Goldsmith, CEO of Matasano Security, who will present the firm's new research on FIX at the upcoming Black Hat USA briefings later this month.

posted by Fergie @ 7/09/2007 11:15:00 AM