I was just listening to a presentation of how the SIEM deployment at Société Générale did not work adequately. It is not hard to figure out the vendor they used, so I’ll leave it alone here, but you might want to look it up if you own one or are considering a purchase.

Researching some of the control/compliance mistakes brought me to a site called innovation Creators where a consultant had a few blistering comments, attacking both the WSJ and Société Générale management:

Derivatives trades may be complex bets, but they do result in real money flowing back and forth. That real money comes out of real bank accounts. Eventually, the CFO has to notice. Something like

“Holy Crap!, we have 500 Million more Euros than we thought we would”

And, when your bets start to get into the Billions of Euros, if you are betting exchange traded futures, real margin calls start to happen. If you are betting OTC derivatives, other banks, with half way decent internal controls, start calling you up and asking for more collateral.

The SocGen CFO and the head of Treasury should have noticed.

Some good questions raised by the author, and useful insights, albeit a bit condemning of human error. I am most curious about how the SIEM implementation will change now, or whether they will abandon the current vendor and seek out one of the market leaders to help fix their controls.

A story in The Register discusses an infrastructure compromise in Poland orchestrated by a motivated teenager:

Transport command and control systems are commonly designed by engineers with little exposure or knowledge about security using commodity electronics and a little native wit. The apparent ease with which Lodz’s tram network was hacked, even by these low standards, is still a bit of an eye opener.

Problems with the signalling system on Lodz’s tram network became apparent on Tuesday when a driver attempting to steer his vehicle to the right was involuntarily taken to the left. As a result the rear wagon of the train jumped the rails and collided with another passing tram. Transport staff immediately suspected outside interference.

The youth, described by his teachers as an electronics buff and exemplary student, faces charges at a special juvenile court of endangering public safety.

A “little native wit”? It actually does not sound like there was much ease, since the teen reportedly spent a great deal of time studying the system. I guess what I am saying is lets give this guy some credit. He did not just park his car on the tracks, he actually did some research and development.

ComputerWorld tells of a new “outsider” threat. Their article emphasizes that this is something for executives to take seriously, but the threat is obviously one for anyone who thinks search without a warrant is a concern:

The Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) is warning its members to limit the amount of proprietary business information they carry on laptops and other electronic devices because of fears that government agents can seize that data at U.S. border crossings.

Seize, search, reveal or even arrest and prosecute.

A news story prompted me to look at the strange site “exboyfriendjewelry.com” where you can click on categories such as “gifts that should have been jewelry”. I guess the point is that purchasing something from a spurned or angry person might mean you get a bigger discount?

Anyway, when I clicked on a link, this is all I saw:

DB function failed with error number 145
Table ‘./joomlaboyfriend/jos_session’ is marked as crashed and should be repaired SQL=SELECT session_id FROM jos_session WHERE session_id = ‘b781cf5fddf30a084148d85edbc68d79’
SQL =

SELECT session_id
FROM jos_session
WHERE session_id = ‘b781cf5fddf30a084148d85edbc68d79’

Ooops. And then the site went down completely. It is always annoying to see detailed errors posted directly to the interface. Bad security practice. Maybe I need a doghouse category?

Maybe an ex-boyfriend wasn’t so happy to see his stuff up for sale…