Fergie's Tech Blog

FBI: Russian Programmer Stole Stock-Trading Secret Code

Kim Zetter writes on Threat Level:

A computer programmer working for Goldman Sachs was arrested last week on charges that he stole proprietary source code for software his employer uses to make sophisticated, high-speed, high-volume stock and commodities trades.

Sergey Aleynikov, who earned nearly $400,000 a year in his job, allegedly stole 32 megabytes of data over four days in June and transferred it to a website hosted in Germany before trying to erase his tracks from Goldman Sach’s network. He neglected to take into account, however, that the company kept a backup record of its command logs. On at least two occasions, he transferred the data remotely while logged into his company’s network from his home computer.

Aleynikov, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Russia, was arrested on July 3 at the Newark Airport in New Jersey as he exited a flight and is being held on charges related to theft of trade secrets until he posts $750,000 in bond, pays $75,000 in cash and surrenders his travel documents.

Although the complaint against him [.pdf] doesn’t name the financial institution he worked for, news outlets, and a source familiar with the case, say Aleynikov worked for Goldman Sachs.

Aleynikov allegedly stole the code in the last days before he left Goldman Sachs on June 5 to take a job with a new, unnamed firm in the high-volume trade industry that promised to pay him three times the salary he’d been earning.

posted by Fergie @ 7/06/2009 06:31:00 PM