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All my Deutschlandtickets gone: Fraud at an industrial scale [video]

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Re: All my Deutschlandtickets gone: Fraud at an industrial scale [video]

#71

Post by AdrianB1 »

It looks like another system made by politicians to check a box on a list. "Digitalize" is not a purpose, it's a solution to a problem, but for many politicians it's a checkbox on the list of political promises and empty words they sell.

Also in Europe excellence is not rewarded. Nobody become a millionaire by designing and building great IT systems, there is no SV salary to attract and motivate talents, so we are drowning in mediocrity and when the governments are making systems, barely delivering something is the norm. The quality of requirements is very low (who will do better?), the deliverables are either from the lowest bidder or from the party in power friends, depending on the country and project.

Re: All my Deutschlandtickets gone: Fraud at an industrial scale [video]

#72

Post by nottorp »

striking wrote: post #30
lysace wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT managed the following given the submitted source URL and the prompt "summarize the key technical facts into two sentences suitable for a hacker news comment". Deutschlandticket fraud stemmed from decentralization and weak controls: tickets were issued instantly on unverified SEPA debits, and a leaked or mismanaged signing key let attackers mint valid tickets at scale. Poor revocation and fragmented verificati…

Instead of making a fuss, have you considered taking another look at the video page? It includes a summary that helps show why those technical facts are actually relevant in the context of German society, and hints at how those things came to happen. I would normally not bother with a comment, but this time I'm genuinely curious as to how someone might have missed scrolling down to see the summary. (edit: the fussy b…

> I'm genuinely curious as to how someone might have missed scrolling down to see the summary.

Pretty simple. On my laptop the video fits 100% in the browser tab and there is no indication that there is more content under it. There is no text except the video title in the portion that I see when the page loads. And the link is marked [video] on HN.

So I simply closed it.

Re: All my Deutschlandtickets gone: Fraud at an industrial scale [video]

#73

Post by netsharc »

rumplecat wrote: post #63
ngruhn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sure what you count RB/RE as, but they are absolutely broken as well in my experience.

The german trains, even at their worst, are so much better than anything in the US. Complaining can also be a sport in Germany. Take a ride on Njtransit or the NYC subway to appreciate the difference. Or try to get anywhere in New Jersey without a car. In many parts of Germany, you can get almost anywhere conveniently with only public transportation.

It's probably worse if it was once reliable and now not, compared to if it's never reliable: if it's never reliable, you've been trained to have a huge safety margin and backup plans, if it's reliable and suddenly it messes up, you're thrown in a new situation and have to think "Shit, what do I do now?". Probably very stressful, and it leads people to avoid the service altogether.

Although apparently NYC subways used to be better too.

Re: All my Deutschlandtickets gone: Fraud at an industrial scale [video]

#74

Post by anaisbetts »

nicbou wrote: post #65
chvid wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the lack of centralization - there should obviously only be one issuer of this ticket and thus just only one website / app to keep bug free.

Germany has a tendency to wish something into existence with a law, and stop there. No guidelines, no tools, no enforcement. Often not a thought about feasibility. Nothing past the press release. Sometimes a law will be in effect for two or three years and virtually no one will even know about it. Recycling electronics in supermarkets? Nope. E-Rechnung mandated for all B2B invoices? In your dreams. I work at the othe…

> Germany has a tendency to wish something into existence with a law

After living here five years I've finally realized the same thing - Germany is the country of Rules, often well-intentioned, but no one actually follows them. It's especially damning when those rules actually are important and would protect regular people esp. around labor and housing, but oops zero meaningful enforcement. Wish we'd have 1/10th the rules but people had to actually follow them

Re: All my Deutschlandtickets gone: Fraud at an industrial scale [video]

#75

Post by anaisbetts »

lysace wrote: post #18

tl;dw please?

Transit companies are pretty bad at PKI infrastructure and internet security combined with the inefficiencies inherent in German bureaucracy / anti-centralization as well as the inherent insecurity of the SEPA model sometimes make crime possible

Re: All my Deutschlandtickets gone: Fraud at an industrial scale [video]

#76

Post by anaisbetts »

chvid wrote: post #20
jiehong wrote: post #16

Germany has missed the digitalisation train, but how long will it continue to miss it for? At least, transparent issues like this one can only help.

The problem is the lack of centralization - there should obviously only be one issuer of this ticket and thus just only one website / app to keep bug free.

The country that lived through pervasive mass state surveillance by secret police for 40 years is unsurprisingly quite cagey about digital centralization of records, even so many years later

Re: All my Deutschlandtickets gone: Fraud at an industrial scale [video]

#77

Post by anaisbetts »

pjmlp wrote: post #70
lachiflippi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of centralization is one part of it (see also: communal digital services), yes, but the complete lack of standards and guidelines is also a massive issue. I tried buying a Deutschlandticket from the DB Navigator app a while back, and immediately ran into some issues: - they only take credit card, probably because of the massive SEPA fraud they've had happen - they require id verification with a third party(!), w…

Or foreigners that don't have German e-persos, because 99% of the time we don't need them.

If you've come to Germany as a foreigner recently you might have it automatically, newer ID cards have it activated

Re: All my Deutschlandtickets gone: Fraud at an industrial scale [video]

#78

Post by pjmlp »

anaisbetts wrote: post #77
pjmlp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or foreigners that don't have German e-persos, because 99% of the time we don't need them.

If you've come to Germany as a foreigner recently you might have it automatically, newer ID cards have it activated

I lived here half on my life, and even though Portuguese ID cards are also electronic, they aren't accepted in such workflows.

I would need to pay 70 euros for one at a Burgerbûro just for that purpose.

Re: All my Deutschlandtickets gone: Fraud at an industrial scale [video]

#79

Post by yorwba »

fxwin wrote: post #67
bajinga wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no they are not. source: i am german and i use regional trains occasionally

thats great, but they are on time 85% of the time vs long distance trains' 62% https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen... see my other comment too

If you take a train to work five days a week and it's "on time" (not delayed by 6 minutes or more) 85% of the time, you'll be late on at least one day most weeks. Hardly very punctual.

Personally, I think they should just abandon timetables, run trains as fast as they can, and if you need to be somewhere by a certain time, you give the planner a target reliability and it uses a probabilistic model of the entire system to tell you when to leave so you can arrive on time (0 minutes delay, or earlier) with that given probability.

Re: All my Deutschlandtickets gone: Fraud at an industrial scale [video]

#80

Post by panick21_ »

Pamar wrote: post #60
panick21_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder who pays for the real cost of the ticket Everybody already has local regional tickets anyway. And most people can't be in more then one place at the time anyway. And most people stay in the same region most of the time anyway. So really you are not losing much compared to having separate local region tickets in a system where the long distance trains are separated. > who cleans and repairs the trains The a…

Not sure I understand your point about Everybody already has local regional tickets anyway. And most people can't be in more then one place at the time anyway. And most people stay in the same region most of the time anyway. I live in Rostock. So if I want to go to Berlin or Hamburg (you know, where stuff like actual airports are) I am crossing "regional borders" even if it is a 200-250 km trip to each city

Most people don't use regional services to travel long distances. And you pay for proper inter-city services.

The point is, if you are in Hamburg, you are no longer in Rostock. So you are only using regional services in exactly one place.

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