Network Security News

Goldman Sachs employee arrested for code theft

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

FBI agents on Friday arrested Sergey Aleynikov, a former employee of Goldman Sachs who allegedly stole 32 megabytes of code for a sophisticated automated trading platform and transferred it to a website hosted in Germany.

The federal complaint did not identify the victimized company, but the Reuters news agency confirmed that Aleynikov worked for Goldman Sachs.

An FBI agent on the case said in the complaint that Aleynikov was discovered because he transferred data while remotely logged on to his employee account. Goldman Sachs monitors transfers across its network.

Aleynikov allegedly used a script that copied, compressed and encrypted files, renamed them and then transferred them to a website in Germany. Once the data was transferred, the program used to encrypt the files was erased.

However, Goldman Sachs' system maintained a back-up copy of the Unix code Aleynikov used on his desktop, known as a "bash history." Aleynikov allegedly attempted to erase the bash history on his desktop, but was unsuccessful.

According to the complaint, Aleynikov had been employed since May 2007 to develop Goldman Sachs' trading software and had informed the company he was resigning to go to another trading company at three times his Goldman Sachs salary of $400,000.
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