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American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent

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Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent

#161

Post by DonHopkins »

b20000 wrote: post #138
zinekeller wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there are many Javascript "developers" that don't deserve that title, there are much much more actually-good JS developers than actually-good Perl developers, not to mention the willingness to program Javascript than Perl.

i might be able to accept that there are more javascript developers than perl developers. this then implies there are more good javascript developers, but only if javascript does not attract more wannabe developers. and i think that might be the issue.

No, seriously, there is absolutely no comparison between the number of Perl 5 and JavaScript developers.

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020

Most popular technologies:

JavaScript: 67.7% for all devs, 69.7% for pro devs): First place!

Perl: 3.1% for all devs, 3.3% with pro devs: Third from last place, only a wee bit more popular than Haskel and Julia!

And you can take a guess at how many jobs for Haskel and Julia programmers there are.

And it's not like good Perl 5 programmers are dropping dead, or being hit by busses: They're simply moving on to better, more popular, well supported, widely taught, more modern, higher paying, more pleasurable languages!

Any programmer who permanently sticks to only one language and has "no interest in learning yet another programming language" simply isn't a good programmer, no matter what their only language is.

Any decent professional programmer (ESPECIALLY web developers) should have no trouble picking up and applying new languages, and regularly using multiple languages together at the same time every day. The world is not partitions into mono-linguistic silos, and no one language is good for everything.

If those monolinguistic Perl 5 developers b20000 speaks of who refuse to use any other languages are the only ones left for BooKing.com to hire, then it's no wonder they have enormous security holes and terrible buggy hard-to-maintain code.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3026446/the-fall-of-perl-the-web...

Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent

#162

Post by joshgrib »

nverno wrote: post #141
hosteur wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Would you rather live under the American, Russian, or Chinese government? Probably as simple as that- what's considered damaging in this case likely depends on your preferences.

I think you can both say you'd rather live in the US, and at the same time our intelligence agencies do just as much (if not more) damage worldwide. For example if you live in South America the US is a much bigger risk to you than other countries because they overthrow any govt they don't agree with, regardless of what the people of the country want. Russian spying doesn't seem to result in much damage as far as I can tell, while US spying is regularly used to undermine democracy.

If the motto of a country was "we'll keep you safe inside but we'll be treating everyone outside terribly", then you'd definitely rather live inside that country, but it doesn't mean they're less of a risk to the world.

Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent

#163

Post by throwaway4good »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #150
hetspookjee wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol you'd be suprised. Recently one large dutch newspaper published a scathing report published by CapGemini (large consultancy in NL) that researched the security setup at the largest telco in NL (KPN). They found that Huawei was able to listen, read and do pretty much anything they'd like with the data. But this was quickly swept beneath the rug. So no, I am pretty confident that the attitude wouldn't be different…

Bert Hubert publicized this event a year ago. And he is one of the most influential bloggers in Europe. The problem is muuuuch larger.

For every newspaper article that covers actual US espionage, I can show you ten that speculate on the potential of espionage by Huawei and other Chinese companies.

I think we in western europe are kind of embarrased by US surveillance and the fact that we cannot do anything about it.

That is why we try to ignore it and not talk about it.

Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent

#164

Post by nostrebored »

amirs wrote: post #120
maze-le wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I use booking.com: Search for a suitable hotel or apartment and find their name. Then search for them independently and make the reservation directly. I mean: they have a great search interface and all, but I refuse to funnel money to gatekeepers whenever I can... Stories like this just affirm my suspicions about companies like them...

To play the devil's advocate here - I do the same as you, but last month when I booked a 3 week vacation Booking offered better prices than the hotels themselves. They also didn't pull any stunts like other hotel aggregators do (show you a price and change it when you get to the checkout). I also had a single instance in the past where I wanted to prolong my stay at a hotel, and the hotel clerk told me I'd get a bett…

It’s because booking purchases the rooms wholesale, and typically well in advance of the stay dates. They can offer you a lower price because hotels use them to make their business more predictable.

Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent

#166

Post by that_guy_iain »

sandworm101 wrote: post #153
qwertox wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Google Translate: > Booking has never encountered espionage before. The company isn't really looking for it either. As long as it doesn't cause any hindrance, it won't cost you any money. The unspoken consensus among specialists within the company is: we suspect that intelligence services are watching, but as long as we don't see them, we don't worry. What should make me believe that they don't have the…

>> black hat hackers How are foreign intelligence services not black hats? They are stealing data in order to use it for any number of non-nice things. Not selling the data on the dark web doesn't bleach their hats.

I would assume most are hackers for hire. Just because their customers are goverments doesn't change the fact they're selling their wares and data found.

Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent

#167

Post by joshgrib »

dtjb wrote: post #134
tchalla wrote: post #47

Every time I read such articles, I replace the nationalities American with Russian or Chinese just to gauge how the reactions would be.

I'm not saying America is innocent, but those are materially different things with different motivations and risks. The reactions would rightly be different.

How are the motivations and risks different? The motivation seems like "country wants more information to use against people" and the risk is that they do it. At least in recent history (~50 yrs) the US has done way more damage globally through its intelligence agencies than probably any other country

Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent

#168

Post by jdavis703 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #153
qwertox wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Google Translate: > Booking has never encountered espionage before. The company isn't really looking for it either. As long as it doesn't cause any hindrance, it won't cost you any money. The unspoken consensus among specialists within the company is: we suspect that intelligence services are watching, but as long as we don't see them, we don't worry. What should make me believe that they don't have the…

>> black hat hackers How are foreign intelligence services not black hats? They are stealing data in order to use it for any number of non-nice things. Not selling the data on the dark web doesn't bleach their hats.

If intelligence agencies are after you you’ve got way bigger problems than some fraudsters using your data for financial scams. It’s the same reason smart lock hacks don’t scare me… Anyone who is exploiting technology to gain physical access to my physical body is going to get me, regardless if I get hacked or not (e.g. thugs could just kick my door in, or wait outside and launch an ambush).

Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent

#169

Post by furyg3 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #153
qwertox wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Google Translate: > Booking has never encountered espionage before. The company isn't really looking for it either. As long as it doesn't cause any hindrance, it won't cost you any money. The unspoken consensus among specialists within the company is: we suspect that intelligence services are watching, but as long as we don't see them, we don't worry. What should make me believe that they don't have the…

>> black hat hackers How are foreign intelligence services not black hats? They are stealing data in order to use it for any number of non-nice things. Not selling the data on the dark web doesn't bleach their hats.

They are definitely black hats. Intelligence services operating in foreign countries (physically or digitally) are by definition criminals, in that they are breaking the local laws where they are operating / accessing.

That they are doing it for a 'good cause' (often debatable) is somewhat irrelevant, that is a risk/reward calculation that the country/agency/spy needs to make themselves.

If a a friendly country of the Dutch government wants to access records of a Dutch company (Booking.com), there are numerous legal methods to access this data. What's instead happening is that the CIA hacks NL companies and the Dutch RIVM hacks American ones and they share information/metadata with each other so that they can make and end-run around the legal constraints of both nations.

Re: American spy hacked Booking.com, company stayed silent

#170

Post by DonHopkins »

b20000 wrote: post #127
DonHopkins wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I mean that BooKing.com is morally flexible enough to hire anyone who claims they are willing to program in Perl, because it's so damned hard to find good Perl programmers who don't know any other languages they enjoy programming in more, and can't find better jobs than programming in Perl. If BooKing.com were trying to hire JavaScript programmers, they'd have a vastly more enormous pool of young and old, well ed…

javascript implies well educated? so much LOL here. maybe perl programmers are happy with perl and have no interest in learning yet another programming language.

No, I actually meant to indicate that there is a densely populated multidimensional spectrum of young to old, local to remote, well education to self taught, highly experienced to self motivated.

While generally speaking, most remaining Perl 5 programmers are old, remote, self taught, highly experienced, very busy, hard to find, and extremely expensive.

There aren't many schools and universities and bootcamps and online learning sites and youtube channels cranking out new Perl 5 programmers that I know of. But there are a hell of a lot of them for JavaScript.

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