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Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

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61–70 of 145 posts

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#61

Why would you allow a mobile phone with its spark hazard any where near an oil refinery.

Aside: Mobile phone spark risk at petrol stations is a myth: http://i.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/3909468/Petro... - Dr Kruszelnicki said the forecourt warnings were more about service station owners "covering their arses from a legal point of view".

Of course, a refinery needs to be more careful of batteries.

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#62

Why would you allow a mobile phone with its spark hazard any where near an oil refinery.

Are phones actually spark hazards?

I remember a mythbusters episode where they filled an outbuilding with dozens of different cellphones and lots and lots of open cannisters of gasoline and other petrochemicals, then called them all repeatedly without incident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjrkwxMhc4s

I'm sure there are parts of a refinery where even static electricity could be enough to set something off but I'd assume they were not areas that people typically worked.

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#63

I'm confused, throughout the article it mentions contractors being in oil facilities. But it also says "Orbital receives location data without any personal identification information and aggregates it." So how do they know these people are contractors? Or are they just measuring the raw number of people in the oil facilities?

The article doesn't specify, they could be just looking at patterns of "usual" vs "unusual" ad ids showing up.

However, re-identification of "anonymous" ad ids is extremely common, and they could easily be using a service that gives them, for instance, a home address and email account associated with the phone via re-identification methods.

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#64

Well, I must say I didn't expect big corporations would get their "privacy" violated by tacking apps. Do you think it's cheaper to just buy back the data or to set up their own cell towers and block the app traffic?

Or just buy a load of cheap burner phones and fake out the data - use some cheap drones to make them move around :-) A bit like some people hire actors to pretend you have more employees.

A bit like some people hire actors to pretend you have more employees.

Could you expand on this or link to an example? It seems like this wouldn't be cost effective (or useful).

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#65

I'm not surprised in the least. The industry is full of stories that started out as rumors but have ended up proven as true about the lengths they will go for more or better information. I've heard an apocryphal story that I'm still waiting for truth on. It was of a soybean prop trading firm quant who reverse engineered a cross-town rival's trading strategy, allowing them to front run their strategy. The way that the…

Can someone dumb this down a bit and explain? Why would you want to generate the random seed using your company name?

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#66

I'm not surprised in the least. The industry is full of stories that started out as rumors but have ended up proven as true about the lengths they will go for more or better information. I've heard an apocryphal story that I'm still waiting for truth on. It was of a soybean prop trading firm quant who reverse engineered a cross-town rival's trading strategy, allowing them to front run their strategy. The way that the…

>taking a number from the firm's name I'm lost as to what is meant here by "number". Are you saying the target firm was randomizing its iceberg order's component order sizes using the same seed? If yes, how could the target firm's usage of that seed be known by the "attacker" here?

The target firm had a number in their name, kinda like a16z or Office365. The attacking quant knew the target was using iceberg orders which split up and randomize parts of large orders. Attacking quant took a guess at an RNG seed by guessing they used the number in the target firm's name, and then somehow fit the resulting random number stream to order chunk sizes, and was able to confirm they used that number as a seed. From then on, using that information, they would identify (I'm assuming probabilitistically) when the target firm was executing a large iceberg order, and then front run the remainder of their order.

It sounds ridiculous on its face, but the industry is known for going to extremes, and that sort of problem solving isn't unheard of in other domains (like cryptography for example). I'm way out of my depth with understanding it, and it could be complete bullshit, but it isn't outside the realm of what I've seen proven in the past, which is why I'm hoping someone someday will confirm it.

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#67

I'm not surprised in the least. The industry is full of stories that started out as rumors but have ended up proven as true about the lengths they will go for more or better information. I've heard an apocryphal story that I'm still waiting for truth on. It was of a soybean prop trading firm quant who reverse engineered a cross-town rival's trading strategy, allowing them to front run their strategy. The way that the…

I heard that story from a quant friend. However, the way I heard the story, the targeted firm found out about their rival's attempt to game their strategy, and faked a bunch of activity. The rival's algorithm acted on the activity and placed a large market order...in the wrong direction.

This is called spoofing and is illegal.

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#68

I'm confused, throughout the article it mentions contractors being in oil facilities. But it also says "Orbital receives location data without any personal identification information and aggregates it." So how do they know these people are contractors? Or are they just measuring the raw number of people in the oil facilities?

Contractors might have specialized skills related to refineries, so you could look for phones that spend small-to-medium amounts of time at refineries belonging to different companies. You'd probably catch some inspectors and the food truck guy and whatnot, but for the most part it should only be contractors moving around between companies like that.

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#69
post #65

I'm not surprised in the least. The industry is full of stories that started out as rumors but have ended up proven as true about the lengths they will go for more or better information. I've heard an apocryphal story that I'm still waiting for truth on. It was of a soybean prop trading firm quant who reverse engineered a cross-town rival's trading strategy, allowing them to front run their strategy. The way that the…

Can someone dumb this down a bit and explain? Why would you want to generate the random seed using your company name?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19515490

I'm assuming that they used the company name for their RNG seed out of laziness or ignorance...very few people would expect that line of attack.

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just buy a load of cheap burner phones and fake out the data - use some cheap drones to make them move around :-) A bit like some people hire actors to pretend you have more employees.

A bit like some people hire actors to pretend you have more employees. Could you expand on this or link to an example? It seems like this wouldn't be cost effective (or useful).

This is done to simulate popular launches (eg. hire people to wait in line when your new store or restaurant opens, to give the impression that the new place is hot) or for faking headcount metrics for investors (eg. hire people for a day when the investors come, so they can gawk at the open office full of people).

It's ethically dubious, but if it's done for a day or two, it's not that expensive compared to actually hiring that many people on a full time basis.

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