Live data from Hacker News

How to own an airline in 3 easy steps and grab the TSA nofly list along the way

maia.crimew.gay

381–390 of 677 posts

Re: How to own an airline in 3 easy steps and grab the TSA nofly list along the way

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just had one today that had the last char of a field as '\', which escaped the closing quote and then munged the column count from there.

Isn't that your parser's problem? I don't think true CSV has any special characters other than comma, quote, and CRLF.

There is no “true CSV”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values:

“The CSV file format is not fully standardized. Separating fields with commas is the foundation, but commas in the data or embedded line breaks have to be handled specially. Some implementations disallow such content while others surround the field with quotation marks, which yet again creates the need for escaping if quotation marks are present in the data.

The term "CSV" also denotes several closely-related delimiter-separated formats that use other field delimiters such as semicolons.[2] These include tab-separated values and space-separated values. A delimiter guaranteed not to be part of the data greatly simplifies parsing.

Alternative delimiter-separated files are often given a ".csv" extension despite the use of a non-comma field separator. This loose terminology can cause problems in data exchange. Many applications that accept CSV files have options to select the delimiter character and the quotation character. Semicolons are often used instead of commas in many European locales in order to use the comma as the decimal separator and, possibly, the period as a decimal grouping character.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values#Standar... mentions a few standards for csv, one of which is the MIME type text/csv, standardized in RFC 4180.

Re: How to own an airline in 3 easy steps and grab the TSA nofly list along the way

#383

This guy is a (hobbyist?) security researcher who responsibly alerts companies of vulnerabilities. However are his actions of downloading the no fly list and offering to share with journalists legal? Or does that cross into overreach and criminal activity?

> downloading the no fly list and offering to share

(This is a genuine question) but where's the actual value in having this list?

I'm afraid I regard it as yet another piece of security theatre.

Full disclosure: my passport always fails to scan at the UK Border automated gates.

I had a discussion this week with yet another border agent after getting another "seek assistance" message and having to queue for a manual check.

I pushed for more information on why, for the last couple of years, it refuses to scan.

He suggested it's because I have very common first and middle names (although my surname is not common at all), so let's say I'm called Alice Bob MacQuaffle, someone called Alice and/or Bob is "on a list" somewhere. I would bet a substantial sum there is no-one on any terrorist watch list called MacQuaffle.

This sounds like someone approved a ridiculously broad match, meaning anyone called Alice and/or Bob is inconvenienced every single time they go near a border.

I would prefer to be safe when travelling just like the next guy, but matching watch lists using common first names ... only .... really?

Re: How to own an airline in 3 easy steps and grab the TSA nofly list along the way

#384

This guy is a (hobbyist?) security researcher who responsibly alerts companies of vulnerabilities. However are his actions of downloading the no fly list and offering to share with journalists legal? Or does that cross into overreach and criminal activity?

I digged a little into this and to my understanding did she never actually 'hack' but just used publicy open data in a smart way which apparently is not illegal under swiss law.

Re: How to own an airline in 3 easy steps and grab the TSA nofly list along the way

#385
post #129

This guy is a (hobbyist?) security researcher who responsibly alerts companies of vulnerabilities. However are his actions of downloading the no fly list and offering to share with journalists legal? Or does that cross into overreach and criminal activity?

it isn't a guy and it uses it/its pronouns.

Interesting to see in which prison "it" will land

Re: How to own an airline in 3 easy steps and grab the TSA nofly list along the way

#386
post #318

TIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maia_arson_crimew > In March 2021, crimew was indicted by a grand jury in the United States on criminal charges related to her alleged hacking activity between 2019 and 2021. The charges were unrelated to the hack of Verkada. Her home and her parents' home were raided by the Swiss police at the request of United States authorities, and her electronic devices were seized. People used…

What a Wally. What purpose did it serve doing this?

Re: How to own an airline in 3 easy steps and grab the TSA nofly list along the way

#387

This guy is a (hobbyist?) security researcher who responsibly alerts companies of vulnerabilities. However are his actions of downloading the no fly list and offering to share with journalists legal? Or does that cross into overreach and criminal activity?

> downloading the no fly list and offering to share (This is a genuine question) but where's the actual value in having this list? I'm afraid I regard it as yet another piece of security theatre. Full disclosure: my passport always fails to scan at the UK Border automated gates. I had a discussion this week with yet another border agent after getting another "seek assistance" message and having to queue for a manual…

It’s trivial to change your name in the UK so this is bonkers.

Re: How to own an airline in 3 easy steps and grab the TSA nofly list along the way

#388

As a software engineer even I sometimes can't help romanticising hacking in my imagination. But so many times it turns out to be just like some company left the front gate wide open and the "hacker" walked in and took a look around. Eg when an airline had a public API where you could get someone's passport number and details just from their boarding pass https://mango.pdf.zone/finding-former-australian-prime-minis...

Less hacking, more like exploring.

Re: How to own an airline in 3 easy steps and grab the TSA nofly list along the way

#389
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they were born in 1999. We are dealing with a unique mind here.

In reality it’s like a kid listening to the beatles, but with computers. I’m a younger millennial that grew up entrenched in ‘hacker culture’ and even then there was a clear fetishisation of the good ol’ days.

Like people using eMacs or vim these days

Re: How to own an airline in 3 easy steps and grab the TSA nofly list along the way

#390
post #125
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh don’t. I spent several hours last week unfucking one of those.

Thank you, I'm considering adopting this as job title, like "senior unfucker".

Mine is principal dung roller.
Post reply on HN