HN Explorer

Ask HN: Moscow Exchange

51 points by jussij ↗ HN
A Google search for "Moscow Exchange" list this as this official URL:

https://www.moex.com/en/

That URL just times out.

Anyone know what's going on?

Is this a DNS attack?

47 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] thread
smoyer
Maybe ... foreigners won't be allowed to trade starting with the opening bell this morning (which should have already happened.) It wouldn't surprise me if the government shut the exchange down completely.

On the other hand, there have been widespread DDOS attacks as well as some pretty high-profile compromises of the Russian computing and network infrastructure. You can even help if you'd like - https://stop-russian-desinformation.near.page/.

rjzzleep
Anyone that doesn't want to unintentionally DDOS infrastructure should probably not click any non news links posted on HN these days.
smoyer
Was that warning not strong enough - perhaps I shouldn't have posted the link at all but I thought it was technically interesting that a tool was developed that even the laity could use simply by loading a web page.
Cannabat
It's not clear at all from your comment that opening the URL would immediately engage my computer in an attempted attack. I really would have liked an explicit warning. The JS on the page actually froze my browser; I had to force-quit it, turn off my wifi, and then open it again to be able to close the tab.
michaelgrafl
No it wasn't. I only realized after reading the description on the website itself. I'm on a break at work, and it feels funky to have this website doing its thing from here.
Etheryte
The Moscow Exchange has been closed since last Friday, February 25th, and given how things are going currently, it's unlikely to reopen soon. Many banks, lenders and middlemen already refuse to trade the ruble at all both due to the sanctions and the insane risk involved — any trade with the ruble risks being a major bag holding operation. For all practical intents and purposes, it's currently more or less in free-fall [0].

[0] https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=RUB&to=USD&view=1Y

throwaway4good
It is under deliberate attack from the west as we have blocked the Russian central bank from using its massive foreign reserve to buy up the rubble as it normally would do.

I think though the ruble will weather the storm; it is mostly used internally in Russia, the interest rates have been yanked up to 20%, and Russia still exports massive amounts of commodities (how they get paid I don't know? Chinese Yuan and Indian rupees maybe ...).

smcl
Weirdly it's recovered about half of the losses from this morning (went from 83 RUB/dollar, up to 110 RUB/dollar and back at 100RUB/dollar).
jacquesm
That will stop at some point and then the bottom will really fall out. There is only so much sink capacity for a weak currency like the Ruble always was.
HWR_14
I would guess it's being buoyed by people who think the upcoming peace talks will let Putin skate away without long term damage to Russia.

Either that, or oligarchs are moving hidden assets back to Russia. Either because they worry they will he discovered or to take advantage of the falling Ruble to buy the other half of the country. Or maybe it's because the market of people buying rubles is really thin right now, and this is an attempt by the Russian government to manipulate the price and public opinion.

1ris
This is because the russian central bank is buying rubels for dollar and other currencies. European Union tries to prevent that by freezing the foreign reserves. We will see how this will play out and when and if they burn throu their pile of dollars.

But this exchange rate has become pretty meaningless. Hardly anybody is either willing or allowed to give you USD for your RUB. If you own russian stock you are currently unable to sell it for rubels anyway. This currency is on it's way to non-convertible status.

smcl
Ahhhh yeah, so the same thing the UK did during our own currency squeeze in the 80s
guerrilla
Do you have a source for that or do you just suspect that's what they're doing? A lot of people predicted they would do that, but the only move I've heard is the doubling of the interest rate [1].

1. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FMrpSp-XMAEiO3c?format=png&name=...

1ris
Sorry no. As it turns out this might have incorrect.

/edit:

Since this happens russia banned the transfer of foreign currencies. This is a massive step towards the rubel being non-convertible.

I think that means that russia effectively defaults on almost all debt. But while I think so, but no body else mentions it, so I probably did overlook something.

guerrilla
They updated what they said to clarify: They're only banning new loans, not repayment of old ones.
guerrilla
Yeah, the recovery corresponds to moving the central banks key interest rate from 9.5% to 20% which was apparently sufficient to encourage saving. That's what Bloomberg says on air anyway.
minimilian
how illegal is this? how does one do it without X11?
smoyer
In the U.S. it's definitely illegal and I wasn't recommending the OP perform DDOS. From a technical perspective, it's interesting that anyone with a browser can participate.
juanci_to
Every request that it's sending is being blocked. Probably it's pretty easy to just refuse to serve any request that has that link as the Referer header.
dgut
Optimally people download the source and run it locally to avoid being blocked by referer.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
ndr
You should put a warning around that link: it will start a lot of connections as soon as you open it.
fyleo
It‘s a targeted DDOS coordinated by the „IT Army of Ukraine“

//Edit: Other current targets include Sberbank

aix1
Somewhat curiously, I'm getting "507 Insufficient Storage".
mjhagen
Logs after DDoS attacks can do that.
raxxorrax
Pretty honest web server. Many give you a 500 for anything these days.
Cthulhu_
Probably safer, avoids leaking any kind of information from the website. Ideally they would have a neat error page on a CDN that shows up if the origin server cannot be reached though.
ssijak
A lot of Russian websites are under DDoS. Try some of the online Russian news websites, same thing, at least for me. On the exchange side, they disallowed foreigners from selling Russian assets so they denied the service the old fashioned way anyhow.
fyleo
Current targets also include government agencies, other financial infrastructure (e.g., ATM networks), Crypto exchanges with spikes in Ruble inflow, certain TV stations and few companies.

Targets in Belarus are mainly media companies.

throwawayay02
Probably just blocked outside traffic, specially from EU, US and Japan.
fyleo
No it is down also for domestic IPs
have_faith
This should likely be an `Ask HN:`, most will assume it's a direct link off of the website otherwise.
birdyrooster
They have closed the market until tomorrow morning when they will reassess.
jussij
I would have though a simple HTML web response suggesting "The market is currently closed until tomorrow." would have worked well as their current server response.

I'm generally curious as to what's going on here, only because I went to their web site expecting to find the MOEX was closed, but instead found their site appeared to be down.

blokhasie
www.moex.com seems to be resolving to 0.0.0.0 - explains why it can't be reached.

nslookup www.moex.com 8.8.8.8 Server: dns.google Address: 8.8.8.8

Non-authoritative answer: Name: cl-ae0978b2.gcdn.co Address: 0.0.0.0 Aliases: www.moex.com

peter_retief
It doesn't make sense for the exchange to trade at the moment.
codingkev
Not sure what is going on there, but several Russian stocks (including ADRs and GDRs listed on the NYSE/LSE) have been suspended from trading.
jotm
The fascist Russian government has launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine, a country very close to Europe, which led to the EU and US imposing strict sanctions including a SWIFT block for Russian banks and seizure of Russian assets.

The Ukrainian cybersecurity department is waging war on Russian websites, any and all of them. They've also been really good at (I don't want to call it that, but it is) war propaganda, which got a lot of volunteers to join.

Joining the cyber war is easily done from anywhere in the world, so anyone with any skills is contributing to the defense of a sovereign state that is currently being invaded by fascist Russia.

Nevermind the websites, the EU could see major power outages and severe economic damage, as there is a real possibility of Russia turning off the gas supply to Europe (gas is a fraction of their profits, oil is first by far and even that will be affected) to pressure them into easing restrictions and staying out of the war.

askonomm
It's not "close to Europe", it IS Europe.
jotm
Yeah, it's just that no one really cared until they launched a full scale invasion right at the borders.

Probably even then they wouldn't have cared if not for millions of displaced people heading west. So in the eyes of the EU, it's a bit too close to them.

Hopefully Ukraine is successful and talks about NATO and EU are taken more seriously.

insickness
Why did the US and Europe choose Saturday to announce blocking Swift? It seems if they did it while the markets were open on Monday it would cause much more severe damage to Russia.
haughty
Yep, there was talk about disabling 'sell' button for outside investors in a reply to 'illegitimate' sanctions. If you are a russian equity bag holder i feel bad for you, son. But not too bad... due to the fact that proverbial 'bear poking' very quickly escalated to bear bitch slapping, what come next should be interesting to observe (provided you are in a bunker).
est
This seems to be an innocent question but in fact it's a weaponized HN hug of death.
TradingPlaces
A lot of official Russian sites are 404-ing, including state media.