A link to a Google Code repository created by Sergey Aleynikov appeared today on the Sergey Aleynikov Facebook Fan Club. Numerous blogs and forums (here, here, and here as examples) have suggested that it may contain the infamous stolen Goldman Sachs trading source code. I have looked at the freely available, GNU licensed, code myself and it is NOT the aforementioned stolen GS code.
===== UPDATE =====
The moderator of the Facebook group has commented on this article if you are interested in his take.
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The code is in fact, as the Wiki says, a “OS Process Manager for Erlang”. I have uploaded the documentation for the code in a zipped file here so that people can see for themselves, without having to use SVN, what the code does.
OS Process Manager for Erlang Documentation:
http://www.swampreport.com/?attachment_id=1897
A Description of the code from the source:
Description:
============Erlang port program for spawning and controlling OS tasks. It listens for commands sent from Erlang and executes them until the pipe connecting it to Erlang VM is closed or the program receives SIGINT or SIGTERM. At that point it kills all processes it forked by issuing SIGTERM followed by SIGKILL in 6 seconds.
This description can be seen in the source itself here:
http://code.google.com/p/erlexec/source/browse/tags/v1.0/c_src/exec.cpp
The Google Code project was created on August 2nd, 2008 and is listed under the Open Source New BSD License.
“A link to a Google Code repository appeared today (thanks ZeroHedge) on the Sergey Aleynikov Facebook Fan Club, that was suggested to contain the infamous stolen Goldman Sachs trading source code.”
Nowhere on Sergey Aleynikov Facebook Fan Club was the Google Code repository “suggested to contain the” the GS code. The same is true of the Zero Hedge report which specifically says, “While the probability of a smoking gun contained here is marginal at best, strangers things have happened.” And this apart from ZH’s knowing that the GS code was on a German site as indicated in the FBI papers.
You can check this out for yourself at the Sergey Aleynikov Fan Club page:
http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?ref=sb&__a=1#/group.php?gid=123550517320
Thanks for commenting! The Google Code link (and associated comment) on the Facebook group has been removed since I wrote this article. You are the moderator of the FB Group, so you probably know something of this.
Also, at the end of ZH’s article, he asks readers like me to take a look at the code, so I did and posted my conclusions here.
I think, though, that the The Zero Hedge article’s title says enough to deserve this post:
“The Aleynikov Code Dump Uncovered”
The Google Code link hasn’t been removed. Facebook only shows a few latest posts and the rest are accessed by clicking on the ‘See all’ link at top right of the section.
The Google Code repositary can certainly be called the Aleynikov Code Dump although it would probably have been more precise to leave out the ‘The’ part and called it ‘An’… etc.
But I reiterate; nowhere was it “suggested to contain the infamous stolen Goldman Sachs trading source code.” The possibility that it might be connected in some way was left open.
Just checked for the link again and it’s sure there. The whole entry btw is:
saleyn – Google Code
Source: code.google.com
“Serge Aleynikov at Google Code.”
http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=123550517320&__a=1
Ahh! My apologies for missing the link. I have also updated the post to make it a little more clear.
Thank you for taking the time and for being so gracious. That’s not a small point in a world that could do with more of it.
(btw, I couldn’t get to the documentation with the link you gave).
Should be fixed now. Thanks for pointing that out.