Facts are stubborn things - Smollett
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An AS/400 was critical to Madoff's Ponzi scheme
AN ANCIENT IBM AS/400 was crucial to US investment swindler Bernard Madoff's cunning Ponzi scam whereby he made off with huge wodges of other people's cash.
According to a new book, "Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff", author Erin Arvedlund claims that Madoff could not have managed his elaborate fraud without his old clunker of a mid-range computer system.
The IBM AS/400 was used by him and select other employees to print out fake account statements. What they would do was punch in fake trades on the IBM AS/400 and enter share prices that would square with his consistent but imaginary returns on the billions that customers entrusted to his firm.
Central to the scam was that "no one touched" the computer but Madoff. But that would have been a safe bet as no one would want to get their paws on an ancient AS/400 unless they were a real enthusiast.
As one of the founders of the NASDAQ stock exchange, Madoff was one of the pioneers of Wall Street trading technology. If he could make his IBM AS/400 lie to his clientele then we can see why he was so keen on computers. µ
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Working on your obscure, old AS/400 right now! YOU ARE A MORON!
I work almost exclusively with Fortune 1000 companies, and I work exclusively on the AS/400 platform.
Are as bad as ignorant IT and datacenter managers and programmers and DBA's that don't understand IBM systems.
IBM i is currently running on the same Power6 hardware that AIX runs on. Power Systems processor capabilities are 2 years ahead of HP or SUN.
Ask the Fed govt or any big bank if they have "AS400" in the back room. If any will admit it.
Most reliable, most secure, mosted trusted OS period.
It would nice for the author to clarify what "ANCIENT IBM AS/400" means, and, if so inclined, educate himself BEFORE writing.
1) Although the machine no longer carries that moniker, the architecture is quite alive and well.
2) The implication here is that the computer somehow played a part is Madoff's ponzi scheme. Know this: The AS/400, as it was previously known, received the DoD security rating of C2 in 1995!
The computer has nothing to do with how it is used. A ponzi scheme can be run on a Cray sitting in the bowels of the CIA as easily as a PC sitting on telemarketer's desk.
I thought the reason Madoff never migrated to a cheaper/newer system was that it would involve outsiders looking at the data during the migration and the game would be up. Anyways, it's not like Madoff needed to save money - the licensing costs of the AS/400 would have been peanuts in comparison to the fraud.
was used to cover a multitude of sins. What an inspired sleight of hand. Who would expect such an unprepossessing machine to hold the secrets of such a grand piece of larceny?
I followed the breadcrumbs to Deep Capture and guess mad money is right, there is more to come. Packet sniffing is all very well but then you find some that smell so bad you wish you had never opened the fridge.
Having More time than Money Now, wrote first line of My NewSong:
HALL DAT SHEEISH Wants, IS Ano.ther BATCHee'...
Its Sweet Rap Song to Those that havn't heard it, kind of private C right now. Figure Last line is LET THE PRISONERs' GO....YA? Pay plenty good money if provide right right column line & number to "Hang That Chad, Batchee' Hang that Chad Batch In." Hope Soon to have access to US Fed Prison Batch Card Cutter, So Hurry. Times Precious.
Ole Batch DRASHEK
'nuf said
If you think Madoff was bad, take a look at
http://www.deepcapture.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/deepcapture-the-story-v1.pdf
and find out what BAD really means. And that story is not over, yet.
Really, the headline is misleading. It could've been a passworded Windows PC for christ's sake.
What was critical was that Madoff had to have a computer and data system all to himself.
The only thing that's good about this article is that wannabe scammers will now buy AS/400 books and try hacking around on the green screen. STRDBG'ing trough some cryptic old C programs and dream of a wild scam. That is priceless.
Madoff could have used any computer to do his dirty work. The fact he used an AS/400 is completely irrelevant. As one who used an AS/400 before IBM officially announced the product and today use the latest edition of the "IBM i" system I can attest to its stability. As to its specific suitability for committing a crime, "PICNIC - problem in chair, not in computer."
I work for a large casino chain in Vegas.
A few years ago new management spent $40M to upgrade to a Windows based system. It had less functionality and failed for hours at a time on multiple occasions leaving people unable to check in or out, get credit or anything. It cost us alot of money to put them up in other casinos and many of them never came back. In the end, the Windows server was surplussed and all the Windows machines now run terminal emulation software to connect to the original OS/400 system. Everyone involved in the Windows move was fired.
You might also ask the London Stock Exchange how much Windows cost them.
Maybe it's been awhile, but last time I was doing scutwork for the financial industry there was a metric shitton of AS/400 out there, and a whole ecosystem of "web apps" developing on top of Rhumba emulation libraries that screen scraped to create a html frontend..
Isn't Bloomberg AS/400 based?
Now, I knew I should have made more of the Amstrad I had back in teh '80's
They could have done this with a ALTAIR 8800 just as well.
but even today we still can't build anything as solid and long-lasting as the ancient Egyptians did. And this line of machines has a track record of proven reliability. Yet all throughout its history, while it received many rebrandings (AS/400, iSeries, i5), the original name has stuck. So the piece of equipment Madoff may have been using could very well be a state-of-the-art i5/520, yet still be referred to as an 'AS/400'. IBM is still selling and supporting the technology that is the core of many businesses today. The main reason it is not as widespread as it could be is due to two things: 1) the O/S is one of the most sophisticated on the planet and licencing costs are huge, and 2) you actually need to train someone to know how to operate it, which involves training costs and/or higher wages. With Windows-based systems, it doesn't require much to operate a server (as opposed to managing one; you MCSEs are there for a reason), so the resources are plentiful and inexpensive.
My firm retired an NT server system only a few years ago, running on a Pentium II processor. Now that's a clunker ...
(Btw, I've worked on both AS/400/iSeries/i5 and Windows NT/2000/2003 systems for over 20 years; I think I'm qualified to express an opinion.)
In Late 1950s' scheme grew out of developement of ibm 360. 360 sprew out cards if any notch was hand cut. Making extreme mess. -=Computer did it=- was claim made for decades & still accepted today. ibm 376 corrected this, by making new card for altered one, with perfect cut optical holes, only discard bin had any evidence, plus numbered replacement card was known, only as that.
While fake admiral stole cobol base & made new language to promote, Fortran,GIVING Computing to World, finally 400 did it all & did multiple languages simulataneously, so terminal operators couldn't address each others code & O/S.
Bernie; pulling recently, scheme so common back then, it was hard to even get anyone concerned.
In class students rewarded each other for stunts with how to take electric company bill & alter/add few column holes & get free service, No Questions Asked bu Provider. just altering amount wasn't enough, as meter is reread each month.
Bernie probably waiting for Teacher to open closet, subconscious filled with delightful kills & that easily reteachable reward, with little or NO chance of being caught. WHATS IN YOUR ESTATE?.
vondrashek
AS/400's are there and ALIVE! The world is full of them and it is a rock-solid, resilient platform. Many companies have choosen not to migrate into "newer" equipment as the transition would cost them too much.
Yeah, of course it's true that you will primarily see this machines into long-standing companies there, but I still have to find one of them being unhappy with their systems AS/400, as you can easily call them "mission critical".
And, guess what? A LOT of development still goes into those systems. Calling them "obscure" it just pure ignorance. If you want to steal your customers, you just have to cook the data in any database!
Anyway...
Maddoff AS/400 Commands
STRDFU -Start D FU
RCLRSC -Reclaim Resources
PRTDOC -Print Doc
DLTHSTDTA - Delete Historical Data