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Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

theregister.co.uk

31–40 of 114 posts

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#31
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's the bad kind of impressive, one where ATMs still run COBOL.

I'd have to disagree on that part. The ATMs that the company I work for run Windows. We are the largest manufacturer, until the other 2 big ones finish merging. Besides, C is 44 years old and used on a ton of stuff.

Interesting. Windows CE? Are there any glaring technical issues you've run into over the years? What processors are the ATMs using?

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#32
post #6

I think the most impressive part is that apparently the same system and code had been running for 15 years as the number of transactions reported on had increased exponentially

I think it's the bad kind of impressive, one where ATMs still run COBOL.

What advantages do you anticipate from a complete rewrite?

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#33

Synopsis: SEC sends clear message to tech people in finance: shut the fuck up if you find something, silently fix it, and sweep the remaining crumbs under the rug, or else your company will be fined millions.

If they did that and the SEC found out, they probably wouldn't stop at just fining you. Which is probably what Citigroup guessed and why, after realising the extent of the issue, they reported it fully within a month

Indeed, Martha Stewart is a prime example of how NOT to deal with the SEC. Turns out she wasn't guilty of insider trading, but she still went to jail for lying to the SEC about the trades in the first place. They take that very seriously.

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#34
post #6

I think the most impressive part is that apparently the same system and code had been running for 15 years as the number of transactions reported on had increased exponentially

I think it's the bad kind of impressive, one where ATMs still run COBOL.

The bad kind of impressive would be getting running ATMs on NodeJS.

ducks

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#35

//Try this in your console. function should_not_exclude_10B_10C(x) { if ("089" should_not_exclude_10B_10C("10B") should_not_exclude_10B_10C("10C")

Actually, no: ascii 10B>100. The bug above is that you can't do chained inequalities like that in Javascript. Try: should_not_exclude_10B_10C("200")

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#36
post #22
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Citigroup failing to send information on 26,810 transactions in over 2,300 such requests. 26810 requests, do you think they made more than $7m on this? It's about proportional fines. Just because they're a giant company doesn't mean we should find then $1b for forgetting to put a handicapped parking space at one of their offices.

There is a school of thought that punitive fines should be a proportion of company value/earnings rather than an absolute dollar figure to exact an equal amount of discomfort. I think Finnish speeding fines are a percent of income.

Too punitive of a fine would result in Citigroup not reporting.

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#37
post #22
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Citigroup failing to send information on 26,810 transactions in over 2,300 such requests. 26810 requests, do you think they made more than $7m on this? It's about proportional fines. Just because they're a giant company doesn't mean we should find then $1b for forgetting to put a handicapped parking space at one of their offices.

There is a school of thought that punitive fines should be a proportion of company value/earnings rather than an absolute dollar figure to exact an equal amount of discomfort. I think Finnish speeding fines are a percent of income.

There is a school of thought that punitive fines should be a proportion of company value/earnings rather than an absolute dollar figure to exact an equal amount of discomfort.

In the infamous McDonald's coffee lawsuit, this was actually the motivation behind the initial large damage award. The jury attempted to award punitive damages equal to two days' worth of McDonald's coffee revenue.

(obligatory note here for the many people who have heard false information about that case: the coffee spilled in a car, yes, but the car was motionless, in a parking space, and the person who spilled it was not the driver, and was found partially at fault for the spill; she suffered severe burns requiring hospitalization and skin grafts, which is not generally what one expects from coffee; it was found McDonald's served its coffee significantly hotter than other chains, in a temperature range making burns more likely, and was aware of the fact that it could cause severe burns because this wasn't the first case, and in fact McDonald's was aware of hundreds of cases of burns resulting from its coffee; the initial damage award was significantly reduced by the judge; search for Liebeck v. McDonald's for more details)

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#39
post #23

Important to note that they only left these transactions out of report data sent to the SEC. It's not like they were not honoring the transactions or that some people were missing money.

But if those trades included insider trading or market manipulation then they were hidden from the regulators' investigations.

Barings was brought down by trades in a special "error account" 88888 that was excluded from (different) reporting.

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#40
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a school of thought that punitive fines should be a proportion of company value/earnings rather than an absolute dollar figure to exact an equal amount of discomfort. I think Finnish speeding fines are a percent of income.

There is a school of thought that punitive fines should be a proportion of company value/earnings rather than an absolute dollar figure to exact an equal amount of discomfort. In the infamous McDonald's coffee lawsuit, this was actually the motivation behind the initial large damage award. The jury attempted to award punitive damages equal to two days' worth of McDonald's coffee revenue. (obligatory note here for the…

Yeah though even then it was connected to the coffee revenue, right?

I feel like this school of thought is also the one that ends up with things like "3 strikes and you're 25-to-life"

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