Tech Buzz - Fatal Flaw

Fatal Flaw

The game proved to be a success but there was a flaw in the programming that allowed two 17 year olds to exploit this flaw and cause some big errors to occur in the game. Because when you bought into one stock it caused the value of another stock in the same industry to fall you were able to commit arbitrage by buying the falling stock, selling the original stock, and then sell the stock that fell at a profit. Two kids with the name Torch (Joe Molinari) and GreenLantern (Jacob Hensley) were able to use this and earn large gains. Yahoo tried to fix the problem by not allowing a single person to purchase more than one stock in a single industry but Torch and GreenLantern were able to work together to again exploit this flaw. Yahoo later banned these two individuals from the game because of the fatal flaw they found. This is documented in an industry journal that was given to Jacob Hensley from David Pennock, one of the researches in charge of the game from Yahoo.