Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by noinsight » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 6:43 AM UTC

eli wrote: post #22

rtpg wrote: 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.

> I think Finnish speeding fines are a percent of income.

Yes and no. Lesser infractions are static amounts, larger ones are based on day fines, they determine the amount of days -> units for the fine based on the severity of the infraction and the units are used as a multiplier against your daily income for your fine.

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

#42

Post by aaron695 » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 6:55 AM UTC

fredfoobar42 wrote: post #12

$7m is pocket change for Citigroup. No wonder the big banks keep shitting the bed. There's never any real consequences for their fuckups.

This is the sort of comment why people vote for Trump.

They made a mistake, a programming mistake no less, something many people here have done.

Then fully admitted it when they found out.

Yet this is them being evil?

No wonder people vote against the left.

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

#43

Post by ComodoHacker » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 7:01 AM UTC

Part of responsibility here is on SEC too IMO. When designing that "blueprint" format and data exchange protocols, they didn't implement mechanisms to verify correctness and completeness of data received.

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

#44

Post by cm2187 » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 7:01 AM UTC

aaron695 wrote: post #42

fredfoobar42 wrote: post #12

$7m is pocket change for Citigroup. No wonder the big banks keep shitting the bed. There's never any real consequences for their fuckups.

This is the sort of comment why people vote for Trump. They made a mistake, a programming mistake no less, something many people here have done. Then fully admitted it when they found out. Yet this is them being evil? No wonder people vote against the left.

The other thing is with a company the size of citigroup (250,000 employees), it is statically impossible not to have:

- incompetent and/or careless employees and managers

- dishonnest employees

- computer bugs, glitches, clerical errors

If you take down a large corporation every time you find any of these, there will be no corporation left within a year. Just small companies that were statistically lucky to have neither of those that particular year.

Name me a program, any program (other than Hello World) where no bug has never been found!

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

#45

Post by smcl » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 7:07 AM UTC

bbcbasic wrote: post #20

jmtulloss wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's probably a comment above it // XXX: too general, revisit when we have more than 100 branches

Should have written TODO

I've seen the XXX suffix in the CPython source code - what does it mean compared to TODO?

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

#46

Post by jondubois » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 7:09 AM UTC

fredfoobar42 wrote: post #12

$7m is pocket change for Citigroup. No wonder the big banks keep shitting the bed. There's never any real consequences for their fuckups.

I was thinking the exact same thing. They should have a really thorough investigation and they need to make sure that NO ONE knew about this bug at any point in the past 15 years.

If Citygroup has a habit of hiring and fostering employees who turn a blind eye and keep their mouths shut, then they should be punished severely.

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

#47

Post by eru » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 7:11 AM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #46

fredfoobar42 wrote: post #12

$7m is pocket change for Citigroup. No wonder the big banks keep shitting the bed. There's never any real consequences for their fuckups.

I was thinking the exact same thing. They should have a really thorough investigation and they need to make sure that NO ONE knew about this bug at any point in the past 15 years. If Citygroup has a habit of hiring and fostering employees who turn a blind eye and keep their mouths shut, then they should be punished severely.

If someone knew and didn't say, they should be punished.

If no one knew, the managers who were tasked with setting up procedures and systems for knowing, should be punished.

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

#48

Post by eru » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 7:14 AM UTC

kchoudhu wrote: post #18

fredfoobar42 wrote: post #12

$7m is pocket change for Citigroup. No wonder the big banks keep shitting the bed. There's never any real consequences for their fuckups.

These fines are fundamentally stupid: yes, Citi's IT fucked up, but the fault is with the regulators for having such braindead reporting requirements to begin with. Instead of something sensible like "you trade, you report", the regulators have set up a patchwork of formats, inclusion criteria and target agencies that pretty much ensures that lapses like this occur. Turning Frank-Dodd into workable code is fucking ha…

The banks are sick of this, but just like the grass that doesn't want to be eaten by the cows, they also depend on this complicated regulation to keep our competitors.

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

#49

Post by stickfigure » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 7:14 AM UTC

DugFin wrote: post #33

AdeptusAquinas wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This particular example seems to reinforce the argument for saying nothing at all.

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

#50

Post by eru » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 7:14 AM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #44

aaron695 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the sort of comment why people vote for Trump. They made a mistake, a programming mistake no less, something many people here have done. Then fully admitted it when they found out. Yet this is them being evil? No wonder people vote against the left.

The other thing is with a company the size of citigroup (250,000 employees), it is statically impossible not to have: - incompetent and/or careless employees and managers - dishonnest employees - computer bugs, glitches, clerical errors If you take down a large corporation every time you find any of these, there will be no corporation left within a year. Just small companies that were statistically lucky to have neit…

They had this bug for more than a decade. They should have systems in place to look for these things.

People make mistakes, but these mistakes should be caught before they get into production. And the ones that still make it into production should be hunted.