Hacking the hackers

probe

Naive American journos covering the Black Hat hackers convention in Las Vegas got their office user IDs and passwords stolen while filing stories via the internet facilities provided at the convention centre.

Apparently the news organizations they work for don't provide VPN connections to their staff!

The dumbness of the Anglo-Saxon race never ceases to amaze me! Would they send their wives to a convention of rapists and murderers without some form of protection?

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/08/business/hack.php

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Black Swan

probe wrote: »

The dumbness of the Anglo-Saxon race never ceases to amaze me!

The whole "race?" Or the news orgs without VPNs?

probe

Blue_Lagoon wrote: »

The whole "race?" Or the news orgs without VPNs?

Perhaps not the entire "race" - but yes news orgs and lots of other orgs too who send their employees roaming on public networks, without so much as a vpn nappy to protect them.

Poor security is a common thread in English speaking countries. Few banks in these countries give their personal customers multi factor authentication devices to secure their internet banking logins. The only banks offering personal customers MFA in Ireland AFAIK are Rabobank.ie (Dutch) and Postbank.ie (Belgian).

At Cork Airport I have come across several continental business executives who can't access the internet via BT's WiFi service - because their companies REQUIRE them to use their corporate VPN system for all internet connections using company laptops. They pay BT €10 or whatever on their credit card for a WiFi connection and it doesn't work because BT is blocking certain ports presumably in an attempt to force customers to communicate in clear text over their service. One can only conclude that they are systematically monitoring their customer's internet traffic.

I suggested to one of them that they get a 3G dongle from one of the Irish mobile phone networks. He'd been there, done that - VPN ports blocked on the service they tried too!

Bank card skimming by retailers, using people's payment cards as "loyalty cards" for marketing purposes to track shopping patterns is something I only come across in English speaking countries. A bank card is purely for payment purposes, and is intended to be used by the customer expressly for payment purposes. Using it for building up a database is not essential for the transaction to take place, and this is in breach of EU data protection laws. Only naive or ignorent cardholders put up with it because of the risks of identity theft and threat to their personal privacy.

Moving outside the realm of computer security - apartments and houses are far more physically secure on the Continent with window shutters, and heavy (often steel lined) front doors etc with strong-room style locks that have four or five bolts on each side of the door - something I have never come across in Ireland, GB or US.

English speaking (which often though not always equates with Anglo-Saxon) is the common thread when it comes to poor security and the related breaches of basic human rights, in my experience.

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FruitLover

It's Darwinism mate.