Citi’s $900M Misfire Happened During Software Switch • Hacker News Board

Re: Citi’s $900M Misfire Happened During Software Switch

#51

Post by sukilot » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #16

I assume financial software has the concept of a set of atomic transactions - ie. "debit bob $X and credit mary $X". Given that, presumably all buttons an operator clicks should generate a set of atomic transactions between customers and the bank. An automated system can then check that the total loss to the bank after these transactions have been executed isn't too big. I can't really imagine how any bit of software…

The transaction wasn't too big in any general sense. It was just incorrect for the specific intended action that day.

Re: Citi’s $900M Misfire Happened During Software Switch

#52

Post by yesplorer » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

jordache wrote: post #39

scott31 wrote: post #12

Expected, someone should have caught it in code review. Switch statements are generally harder to follow than if/else chain and fallthrough etc make it even more complicated.

how did you summarize this to be a coding issue?

by not reading the article itself.

Re: Citi’s $900M Misfire Happened During Software Switch

#53

Post by wwright » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

leetrout wrote: post #20

wwright wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but how many lay people care about causation in an RCA? ;)

Root cause analysis

Just because they're about the cause doesn't mean the people writing or reading them care about the cause

Re: Citi’s $900M Misfire Happened During Software Switch

#54

Post by leetrout » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 3:01 AM UTC

wwright wrote: post #53

leetrout wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Root cause analysis

Just because they're about the cause doesn't mean the people writing or reading them care about the cause

Just adding words for the initialism for those that don’t know what RCA is.

Re: Citi’s $900M Misfire Happened During Software Switch

#55

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 11:06 PM UTC

HenryBemis wrote: post #8

sharken wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Citibank is trying to upgrade their ancient systems, but it sure looks as if previous or current CEOs failed to exercise due diligence. Doesn't look like good risk management at all.

Citi is one of them banks that spend a lot of their $$$$$$ in IT. They jokingly say that they are an IT company with a banking license. Anyone related can please pitch in with a TA account. How bad/frequent are their Software Errors?

[deleted]