funsec mailing list archives
UAL Story Blame Is Placed on Computer
From: "Richard M. Smith" <rms () computerbytesman com>
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:42:22 -0400
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122100794359017593.html?mod=todays_us_market place UAL Story Blame Is Placed on Computer Events Remain Murky, But Automated Search, Trades Played Roles By SHIRA OVIDE and JESSICA E. VASCELLARO September 10, 2008; Page B3 As Tribune <http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=trb> Co. and Google <http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=goog> Inc. pointed fingers at each other over the glitch that cratered UAL <http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=ual> Corp.'s stock Monday, blame spread to the computers that robotically troll the Web for news stories and execute stock trades automatically. An old article about UAL's 2002 bankruptcy-court filing resurfaced Monday as an apparently fresh report on Google's news service. Stock in the parent company of United Airlines quickly dropped to $3 a share from nearly $12.50 before the Nasdaq Stock Market halted trading and UAL issued a statement denying any fresh Chapter 11 filing. UAL's stock price ended Tuesday's session at $10.60, down 2.8% on the day and nearly 13% off Monday's open. Nasdaq and lawyers for Tribune and UAL are investigating the incident, and the circumstances of the glitch remain murky. Google traces the appearance of the 2002 article in its search engine to a process that began late last Saturday night. At 10:36 p.m. PDT, Google's "crawler" -- the technology that finds Web pages -- discovered a new link on the Web site of Tribune's South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper in a section called "Popular Stories: Business." The article -- which didn't carry a date but was published by the Chicago Tribune in December 2002 -- hadn't appeared there when Google's crawler last visited the page at 10:17 p.m., the company said. It remains unclear how the old story rocketed onto the list of most popular stories. Tribune said online traffic began to tick up beginning earlier Saturday evening. Some UAL investors suspected there were efforts to manipulate Web traffic in order to sow fears about UAL's financial condition. There may be a more innocuous explanation, however: Amid serious storms in Florida and on the East Coast, Web surfers checking for news about travel delays may have stumbled onto the old UAL story by mistake, and a small number of fresh hits may have been enough to drive it onto the list. A Tribune spokesman declined to say how many hits the article received but said there was no indication of fraud.
From the Sun-Sentinel site, the article became available through Google News
service, accessible if a user searched for keywords like "United Airlines." The article didn't appear in any of the headlines on Google News's home page, but it was picked up and sent via email to people who had created a custom Google News alert about UAL or related topics. The stock market opened Monday with no drop in UAL shares, but the UAL story began circulating widely via a posting by research firm Income Securities Advisors Inc. that was made available to users of Bloomberg L.P., the financial-news service widely watched on Wall Street. Shortly after a headline from the outdated report flashed across Bloomberg screens at about 10:45 a.m., UAL shares began a precipitous drop. Over the next 15 minutes, before Nasdaq halted trading, they dropped as low as $3. ...
_______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
Current thread:
- UAL Story Blame Is Placed on Computer Richard M. Smith (Sep 10)