Money creation, banking software and "back doors"

I know many computer systems are built with "back door's" (as Richard Groves and others have clearly documented. Google: PROMIS) and Im curious as to whether any bankers, powerful groups/institutions or simply hackers, could access a back door to banking software and add money into an account? Even if its not done through hacking, surely there would be someone out there powerful enough who controls much of the banking system who could simply add as many digits as they like to a bank account of their choosing?

a reply to: raberto86

surely there would be someone out there powerful enough who controls much of the banking system who could simply add as many digits as they like to a bank account of their choosing?

Doesn't the "Fed" do that already?

Sorry , I couldn't resist. Back door as in a password hidden in the software by the programmer to insure later access.

Hackers would have as much trouble finding the front door key as the back one. Maybe more, they don't know a back door exists.

Ever see the movie, War Games?

Theres normally all sorts of checks and balances to ensure that no one can easily just stick a few zero's onto an account

I'd imagine a branch of a bank would tally up ins and outs and compare it with what the computer says at the end of the day and most if not all database systems are journalled so every change to it will be logged so probably only a very high ranking sys admin could turn off journalling/alter a DB and then re-enable it but that would be very noticeable except for a few occasions and I'd image they'd check totals pre and post such events to make sure

It'd be possible i bet but it wouldn't be long before you're found so get in and get as much cash out and run before they come after you and its pretty hard to get large sums of cash these days without a lot of questions and probably a few weeks wait to cover for most scams

If I could have access to every banking system at the same time, I would remove every debt and then split the total amount equally in every bank account in the world.

Yes, it would be chaos for a while but a necessary evil IMO.

Thanks for the replies. I just see all the incredible corruption and scandal involving money and finance, and the unbelievable lengths people go to get money, that the ultimate prize would be being able to add money into your own account, so surely some powerful people have colluded to achieve, or try to achieve, this at some stage. Might require 50-100 top security people being in on the scam but still, it cant be that much more ambitious than some other scams like Enrons "mark to market accounting" that everyone was involved in.

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: raberto86

surely there would be someone out there powerful enough who controls much of the banking system who could simply add as many digits as they like to a bank account of their choosing?

Doesn't the "Fed" do that already?

Sorry , I couldn't resist. Back door as in a password hidden in the software by the programmer to insure later access.

Hackers would have as much trouble finding the front door key as the back one. Maybe more, they don't know a back door exists.

Ever see the movie, War Games?

No., never seen it. Will have a look.

Yes, thats what i mean re the Fed. Couldn't some people there and on the outside collude to have some money suddenly appear in another account? Certainly not inconceivable considering its the Fed

Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it ... he who doesn't ... pays it.

― Albert Einstein

Banks lend money that they themselves can create from nothing. Banks are only required to deposit a one percent minimum reserve of central bank money as collateral.

This means that for every dollar deposited, the bank can create 100 dollars and lend this with interest and compound interest. The banks lend money created from nothing and charge interest for something that actually does not exist. Brilliant, if you're part of the club.

I thought the current fractional reserve requirement was 10% for banks with deposit accounts over a certain dollar amount?
2nd

originally posted by: METACOMET

Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it ... he who doesn't ... pays it.

― Albert Einstein

Banks lend money that they themselves can create from nothing. Banks are only required to deposit a one percent minimum reserve of central bank money as collateral.

This means that for every dollar deposited, the bank can create 100 dollars and lend this with interest and compound interest. The banks lend money created from nothing and charge interest for something that actually does not exist. Brilliant, if you're part of the club.

originally posted by: theMediator
If I could have access to every banking system at the same time, I would remove every debt and then split the total amount equally in every bank account in the world.

Yes, it would be chaos for a while but a necessary evil IMO.

Meh. You'd get the same result if you just zeroed out everyone's account. If everyone has the same amount of virtual money then no one has any money.

a reply to: raberto86

Of course there are backdoors, but they generally have to be accessed from within the system. I did a threat analysis about five years ago and got a good look at network structure. It is still possible to access the system from remote locations, so yes, hacking could be accomplished. However, there are many safeguards within the system, probably the biggest one being data redundancy between the main servers and the backup data centers. A change at the main server cluster has to be verified and replicated at the backup cluster, otherwise the alarms go off.

A number of years ago, a guy on the inside skimmed off "fractional" cents from interest bearing accounts and transferred the collective "fractional" cents to an offshore bank. Within a couple of weeks he had amassed tens of millions of dollars, then bank security caught the hack. Once the hack was in place, he should have left immediately and not gotten greedy. He could have taken the money out of the offshore in bearer bonds and placed it in a foundation, trust or IBC (using a blind trust).

There is no hard-fast route to hacking the system and certainly over-reaching greed is problematic, but with patience it can be done.

Cheers - Dave

They do a lot of penetration testing and checking of source code to try and make sure there are no exploitable back doors. It happens from time to time - coders are often lazy and sometimes want to have a backdoor so they can easily debug etc.

As above just adding digits to a bank account wont work, there are checks that will (most likely) pick that up. Most scams will involve either skimming from accounts or from the banks themselves, or from targeted transfers of smallish amounts to an external account (ie a corporate giant may not pick up 10k here and there, which can add up to millions over the years). This is usually done either by an employee or through a social engineering scam, not through direct hacking.