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

bloomberg.com

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

#71

Post by azernik »

darksaints wrote: post #66
harrumph wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

That... sounds amateurish. Everyone just uses a hardware RNG for random number seeds.

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

#72

Post by darksaints »

azernik wrote: post #71
darksaints wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That... sounds amateurish. Everyone just uses a hardware RNG for random number seeds.

It would be amateurish if it were cryptography for sure. But I would never expect that sort of attack vector as a quant. Most quants are worried about alpha loss, not having your order flow fingerprinted.

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

#73

Post by EpicEng »

maxerickson wrote: post #40
_2d30 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in your world, if you’re willing to be X amount self-destructive or accept X risk, you’re also willing to accept X + Y risk or self destruction regardless of how large Y is. Got it.

No, I just expect that acceptance of X is correlated with acceptance of Y. (and really, much of the time, acceptance is the wrong word. Indifference or something like that often fits better)

Which also doesn't hold. I'm willing to invest my money, but I'm not sticking it into penny stocks. Your reasoning ignores any sort of reasonable boundary people have wrt risk.

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

#74

Post by EpicEng »

maxerickson wrote: post #50
maxerickson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course people smoke where it doesn't make much sense. I mean, think about it for a second.

ITT, people love their nic-o-tine.

No, it's only that this isn't Reddit and you have to try a bit harder to bring people over to your way of thinking.

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

#75

Post by ummonk »

akadeb wrote: post #26
maxerickson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course people smoke where it doesn't make much sense. I mean, think about it for a second.

I thought about it and couldn't figure out why it's obvious. Care to share some light on that?

Smoke doesn’t belong in your lungs.

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

#76

Post by mateo1 »

AznHisoka wrote: post #54
tantalor wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8. Indicted for fraud

don't think this is fraud. Oil refineries aren't lying about their oil production to the general public. It's the hedge funds' fault for relying on their location data.

I'm not sure about American law, but most of our laws have a term mentioning "... in Good Faith." These two words are pretty spectacularly effective in disarming you from all sorts of trickery.

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

#77

Post by anigbrowl »

tantalor wrote: post #56
lolc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about it is fraud?

The parts between "fake" and "profit".

This won't meet the elements of fraud in the US because while you could argue that the performative activity was a deliberate representation (in contrast to a false claim where I tell you directly about a great deal on a bridge that doesn't really exist), you'll have trouble establishing the detrimental reliance aspect. If you see misleading activity and then jump to an incorrect conclusion instead of verifying its truth or falsehood then that's on you.

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

#78

Post by aaron695 »

blantonl wrote: post #4

How are they gathering this data? Are they placing detection equipment at/near the target locations to monitor for cell phone signatures in the vicinity, or are they gathering from mobile apps who resell location data to aggregation firms?

Second (aggregation firms) -

http://thasosgroup.com/blog/thasos-data-tesla-wsj/

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

#79

Post by tomsthumb »

doovd wrote: post #67
gamblor956 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From a place of total ignorance, why would telegraphing a particular false strategy to your competitor in order to get them to respond in a way that is profitable to you be illegal?
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