Apparently the guy told the bank himself about what he'd done.
BBC News - UBS trader told bank of error, the BBC learns
Talking about ways around banking systems and 'how could their controls not pick up on this', well it's frankly a piece of piss for anyone with a little knowledge of a bank's systems to find places where you can hide money or even create it from thin air. I know of at least one very large bank where half their applications are supposedly not used but are not taken out of production because they've sacked all the people who know how they work and don't dare switch them off for fear that other systems fall down as a consequence; at least a thousand different applications where you could hide some dosh or some losses. Talking to fellow testers and other IT and risk management people who've worked in other banks apparently it's not an unusual situation. How did this situation arise? Well, start asking the incompetent egomaniacs who think it's smart to sack thousands of people for the sake of 'efficiencies' and 'plenty cheapness' without even having the first bloody clue what those people actually do every day. Oh no, we can't ask them because they're sitting on a beach in the Bahamas enjoying their failure bonusses. How about the countless warnings given by people like testers, risk analysts etc, which are ignored? How about all those moments when some junior asks a good question and is told not to busy himself with such matters? Anyone who's worked in a banking environment and has at least two functioning brain cells must have seen things that should be given a bloody good explanation and either didn't dare ask or was told to shut up by some self worshipping manager whose only concern was keeping bad news from his superiors (who maybe wouldn't care anyway).
This is not to excuse what the guy did, but it doesn't surprise me one bit.
But I have another question; given the slipshod state of systems management in several banks, why are auditors signing off their accounts each year?
BBC News - UBS trader told bank of error, the BBC learns
Talking about ways around banking systems and 'how could their controls not pick up on this', well it's frankly a piece of piss for anyone with a little knowledge of a bank's systems to find places where you can hide money or even create it from thin air. I know of at least one very large bank where half their applications are supposedly not used but are not taken out of production because they've sacked all the people who know how they work and don't dare switch them off for fear that other systems fall down as a consequence; at least a thousand different applications where you could hide some dosh or some losses. Talking to fellow testers and other IT and risk management people who've worked in other banks apparently it's not an unusual situation. How did this situation arise? Well, start asking the incompetent egomaniacs who think it's smart to sack thousands of people for the sake of 'efficiencies' and 'plenty cheapness' without even having the first bloody clue what those people actually do every day. Oh no, we can't ask them because they're sitting on a beach in the Bahamas enjoying their failure bonusses. How about the countless warnings given by people like testers, risk analysts etc, which are ignored? How about all those moments when some junior asks a good question and is told not to busy himself with such matters? Anyone who's worked in a banking environment and has at least two functioning brain cells must have seen things that should be given a bloody good explanation and either didn't dare ask or was told to shut up by some self worshipping manager whose only concern was keeping bad news from his superiors (who maybe wouldn't care anyway).
This is not to excuse what the guy did, but it doesn't surprise me one bit.
But I have another question; given the slipshod state of systems management in several banks, why are auditors signing off their accounts each year?
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