Nasdaq crash was caused by dodgy software
 

The shutting down of the Nasdaq exchange due to computer problems was not because of hackers, as many had suspected.

Apparently the three-hour halt in trading arose from shonky software.

The Nasdaq OMX Group released preliminary findings that provided the clearest official insight into what caused the trading halt, being called in trading circles as the "flash freeze".

Stock prices were little affected when the exchange reopened late in the afternoon of 22 August, but there were fears about the fragility of modern markets and their dependence technology.

There were some suggestions that they were potentially vulnerable to hackers.

In this situation, however, the software appears to have gone wrong after the Arca system of NYSE Euronext tried several times to connect with the Nasdaq system.

That generated a surge of data which led to a failure of Nasdaq's backup systems, forcing the market to go offline to fix the problem.

Robert Greifeld, Nasdaq's chief executive was quoted by the New York Times as saying that the code has a nefarious way of working and then not working.

http://news.techeye.net/software/nas...dodgy-software