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06 July 2009, 09:25

Ex-Goldman Sachs developer arrested for code theft

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According to a Reuters report Sergey Aleynikov, a Russian immigrant living in the US, was arrested by the FBI on the 3rd of July for stealing code from a New York based financial institution. The report states that it is believed that Aleynikov had worked at Goldman Sachs from 2007 until June 2009, and was responsible for "the development of a real time co-located high frequency trading platform".

A copy of the affidavit at the Zerohedge blog alleges that Aleynikov notified the "Financial Institution" that employed him that he intended to resign and move to a new company based in Chicago which was engaged in high volume automated trading. The affidavit goes on to allege that Aleynikov, in his last days at his employer, configured his desktop system to copy and compress files, encrypt the resulting file and move an estimated 32MB of data over an https connection to web site based in Germany.

Aleynikov, according to the affidavit, "claimed, however, that he only intended to collect 'open source' files on which he had worked, but later realised that he had obtained more files than he intended" and that he denies that he has distributed any of the "Financial Institution's" proprietary software. The affidavit says, though, that the encryption of the files and the subsequent deletion of the software used to encrypt them indicates some other motivation.

(djwm)

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