A lot of folks spend Memorial Day weekend reading a good novel on the beach. As it so happens, a new book from Microsoft team member Mark Russinovich hit bookstores this week. It"s called Rogue Code and it"s his third novel to feature the protagonist cyber security expert Jeff Aiken.
The novel, published by Thomas Dunne Books, centers on Aiken being called in to investigate a computer breach at the New York Stock Exchange. Naturally, things go from bad to worse as Aiken not only has to stop a massive cyber threat to the U.S economy but also has to deal with being accused of theft by the NYSE.
Russinovich has worked at Microsoft since 2006 when his software company, Winternals, was acquired by the folks at Redmond. He is currently a Technical Fellow on the Microsoft Azure team. In a chat with the Wall Street Journal, he said he came up with the idea for Rogue Code a few years ago. That"s when the use of computer controlled high-frequency trading in the stock market was called into question when the "Flash Crash" of 2010 caused a massive dip in the Dow Jones Industrial average that only lasted for a couple of minutes.
Russinovich told the WSJ that such methods of stock trading are a detriment overall, saying, "The systems are so complex and intricate and so finely tuned that I think they are fundamentally unstable." Hopefully, the scenario he presents in Rogue Code will remain in the realms of fiction.
Source: Mark Russinoich | Image via Thomas Dunne Books