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The Almighty Buck IT Technology

The Fed's System That Allows Banks To Send Money Back and Forth is Down (cnbc.com) 54

Posted by msmash from the breaking-news dept.
The Federal Reserve's system that allows financial institutions to send money back and forth electronically went down Wednesday morning. From a report: The "operational error," as the Fed described it, impacted multiple services, including its pivotal automated clearinghouse system, which connects depository and related institutions send electronic credit and debt transfers. There were no initial indications that foul play was suspected. Along with the Fed ACH service, other systems impacted included the Check 21, FedCash, Fedwire and the national settlement service. A statement from the central bank said it became aware of a problem around 11:15 a.m. ET. "Our technical teams have determined that the cause is a Federal Reserve operational error. We will provide updates via service status as more information becomes available," the Fed said. The statement further noted that the glitch impacted payment deadlines and said the Fed "will communicate remediation efforts to our customers when available."
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The Fed's System That Allows Banks To Send Money Back and Forth is Down More

The Fed's System That Allows Banks To Send Money Back and Forth is Down

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  • Nyah nyah (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:42PM (#61096618)
    Bitcoin is still up, and more and more retailers are accepting it. Fry's wi be accepting it next week! Good times.
  • Oh wait .. Bitcoin has never gone down.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by smap77 ( 1022907 )

      Actually, Bitcoin was up today after being down about $14000 over the weekend.

    • Damn I was going to make a snarky comment about the bitcoin complainers.

    • Bitcoin is a metastatic planet-scale cancer that feeds on coal. China is the worst affected area and will be completely consumed within 20 years.

      • > Bitcoin is a metastatic planet-scale cancer that feeds on coal.

        My goodness - you must really hate legacy finance/currencies which uses two to three orders of magnitude more coal than reasonable cryptocurrencies (yes, including the non-ossified chains of Bitcoin which could easily replace SWIFT today).

    • Re:Bitcoin is also down (Score:4, Informative)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @04:31PM (#61096838)

      Oh wait .. Bitcoin has never gone down.

      Well, by all means you should buy a shitload more. Especially at the current guaranteed-to-never-go-down rock solid prices. Hell, sell the house if you have to. That's practically a lame investment by comparison anyway, right? Real estate is dead. Long live BTC!

    • Bitcoin has never gone down.

      That is hardly an apt description for something that sucks as much cock as Bitcoin does.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @03:53PM (#61096674)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • It's an interesting time for this to go down. Has it ever happened before? How long before we find out what caused this "operational error"? Who stands to make money off it? Here's a hint: Look at all the other comments on this article. There's only 3 as I write this, and they're all the same thing.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by MightyMartian ( 840721 )

      Or possibly the system just went down. Many of us wouldn't have a job if systems didn't spontaneously combust in oh so many ways.

      But that's not very interesting. Much better to insinuate some dark and scary conspiracy. Just remember to insert some evil cabal of leftists, globalists and at least one nefarious Jew. Currently that's George Soros, just in case you have to go look one up.

      • and at least one nefarious Jew. Currently that's George Soros, just in case you have to go look one up.

        Mel Brooks is still alive, you insensitive clod!

      • "Operational error" makes me think somebody decided to "upgrade" something without realizing what all it was tied in to. Maybe somebody new in the administration wanted to make their mark and did it by turning off that useless wiring closet that just seems to suck up power for no reason. Wouldn't be the first time the new person wanted to make a splash and instead made a thud.

        • I think every wiring closet should be surrounded with frickin' laser beams, and a retinal scan, and if over 15% of the network goes down for more than 15 minutes, the room floods with poisonous gas.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            I think every wiring closet should be surrounded with frickin' laser beams, and a retinal scan, and if over 15% of the network goes down for more than 15 minutes, the room floods with poisonous gas.

            I'm not onboard with that.
            My life has been made much more interesting by the number of women who have said yes to "Would you like to see what's in the wiring closet?"
            FYI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          • I wish we could convince management that wiring closets, ALL of them, need locks. No, maintenance doesn't need to store the air filters in there, dammit.

            • Hah, you need to work for better management. Our wiring closet is Badge + PIN entry only, locked down to our team only, and the only reason it doesn't have biometrics is because the building system didn't already support that (and someone on another team didn't want to pay for the upgrade).

    • Has it ever happened before?

      Probably.

      How long before we find out what caused this "operational error"?

      I'm sure there will be some report that neither you or anyone else here will ever read.

      Who stands to make money off it?

      Whatever company has the support contract or manages to sell the government one as a result of this.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by aitikin ( 909209 )

        How long before we find out what caused this "operational error"?

        I'm sure there will be some report that neither you or anyone else here will ever read.

        Hell, the majority of us haven't even RTFS, muchless TFA, and now you want us to read a report too!? Where do you think you are?!

        • How long before we find out what caused this "operational error"?

          I'm sure there will be some report that neither you or anyone else here will ever read.

          Hell, the majority of us haven't even RTFS, muchless TFA, and now you want us to read a report too!? Where do you think you are?!

          No no. He's a management consultant. If you read the report and acted on it he wouldn't be able to charge for making another one by once again regurgitating the things that the permanent employees tell him.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      To me it sounds like "The system got hacked, but we don't want to admit it.". "Operational Error" is rather vague as to what happened.

  • It's either Russians, China, aliens, or a combo.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by aitikin ( 909209 )

      It's either Russians, China, aliens, or a combo.

      You forgot Skynet!

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Skynet is so yesterday. 6g replaced it on the Top 10 Conspiracy list.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GlennC ( 96879 )

        It's either Russians, China, aliens, or a combo.

        You forgot Skynet!

        It's okay, he also forgot the Illuminati.

  • Operational error (Score:5, Funny)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @04:50PM (#61096922) Homepage Journal

    I thought it was your turn to reboot the Win95 box!

  • FedLine went down, lets financial institutions wire money back and forth. we're getting sporadic files now, so its kind of back up? our cash letters (collections of checks to/from other institutions) are / were still available though

  • Already back up at 2:46 PM (Score:5, Informative)

    by clovis ( 4684 ) on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @05:13PM (#61096998)

    So once again the problem was fixed before most of us saw the article.
    https://www.frbservices.org/ap... [frbservices.org]

    February 24, 2021 2:46 PM Eastern Time
    The Fedwire Funds Service, Fedwire Securities Service, and National Settlement Service have resumed processing and are operating normally.

    It will take a while to process the backlog, natch, and untangle things like unnecessay retransmissions.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Then a couple of hours to shoot the messengers, find some patsy to blame it on, and quietly 'horizontally promote' the manager who insisted on replacing the UPS with a $20 surge suppressor.

  • You have no idea.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @05:54PM (#61097130)
    Posting this as AC... I had a consulting gig at the Fed in Richmond in 2019. It was around the modernization of the ACH/Wire stack. The current state of the "system" scared me enough that I did some basic prepping when it was over... I hope entropy doesn't kick in here.

  • Everything was working fine until Microsoft forced update reboots on all the Windows 10 machines.

  • My first job was in public service working for Bank Operations at the Federal Reserve in D.C. Back in those heady days of the mid-1980s, the X.25 network was an amazing thing. Being involved in "information security" (as it was called back then) to support the 10 reserve banks communicating was a joy, launching my career. We were in the early stages of prototyping the ACH system, with the expectation that by 1993 there's be no more paper checks. LOL. But alas, I was never cut out for a role in the bureaucr

  • Pretty soon the more virulent strain of incompetence will swamp the incidence of normal incompetence, leading to millions of deaths of elderly software currently on life support in software nursing homes.

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