Dave G & Jeremy Rauch: Hacking Capitalism

The financial industry isn't built on HTTP/HTTPS and web services like everything else. It has its own set of protocols, built off of some simple building blocks that it employs in order to make sure: that positions are tracked in real time, that any information that might affect a traders action is reliably received, and that trades happens in a fixed timeframe.

Unlike the protocols that comprise the internet as a whole, these haven't been scrutinized to death for security flaws. They're written with performance in mind and security is often just an afterthought, if present at all. And there are dozens of them, with names you may have never heard of before...

This talk will discuss the security implications of the protocols and technologies used by the financial industry to maintain the beating heart of capitalism. We'll take a look at some of the most popular protocols used by financials to execute billions (trillions!) of dollars worth of trades, discuss the flaws inherent in them, some of the implementation flaws in them, and discuss how hiding your money under your mattress might not be the worst idea.

Jeremy Rauch

For over 10 years Jeremy Rauch has been at the forefront of information security. An original member of the ISS X-Force and a co-founder of SecurityFocus, Jeremy is the discoverer of numerous security vulnerabilities in widely-deployed commercial products. Jeremy is also a former principal engineer for optical switching at Tellium.