The bank was correct not to pay the ransom, but damn that does not look good. Secure your shit man.
Once you pay danegeld, you’ll never get rid of the Dane…
I’ve wondered how long it would be before something like this happened. Was the hacker really expecting to get $3M? Or just playing a game with them? The part of me that wants my information secure doesn’t like this. But it can’t make a peep above the huge part of me that is laughing and saying f#%k the Arab Emirates and their banking associates.
As someone who once lived there and had a bank account there, fuck you right back.
Hey guys, get a room!
I understand as I also value information security and data privacy.
I can’t infer what value you have that would be greater than the data privacy concern. Care to share?
No, @ActionAbe is correct. I have friends in the Mid East, and they don’t deserve to have their personal info released in the same way we don’t deserve that.
I’m sure the “hackers” think of themselves as heroes, though.
(I quite agree, I just thought there was too much fucking going on.)
Since you seem to sincerely ask, I’m human. I have conflicting emotions. I want data security for everyone, particularly something like financial information. I would think that the countries of the UAE have a middle class of some sort who might be hurt in this, and the same for their poorer people. But the entire region consistently tops the list of Freedom House’s “not free” or “worst of the worst” on their list of Freedom in the World. Money and these banks are central to their power. Many of these countries are religious kingdoms. They fund terrorism and do so in a way to help keep that terrorism somewhere other than their own country. So a part of me cheers when their power structure is attacked. I have sympathy for their data breach, but that line forms to the left and goes out the door and down the street a couple miles. So back of the line for them. Schadenfreude for me. I wish I could hack at that level. I’d spend my free time attacking the banks that fund the world’s oppression, (including the ones here at home). The trolls can go back to their glass houses.
I’d love to hear about it. What country? Did you work there or were you there just for pleasure?
That’s cool, I can dig it.
True, true. From my vantage, I’ve often seen UAE as one of the more hopeful places in the region, and have thought they play a good role in being an example of a more modern society for their neighbors in Saudi and Yemen. Surely, by the Freedom House data they are not great (though on-par with Russia, Vietnam, and China). Thus, this news struck me as concerning, as I would worry it might push UAE back into the dark ages where their more extreme neighbors are.
So, my line for schadenfreude is a little further to the south at the Yemeni power structures, but that’s no reason to let this bubbly go warm.
Very good points. Grey can look pretty white against the black curtain of Saudi and Yemen. And you are right, countries in that region are the ONLY hope for reform of their neighbors. We have already proven what trying to influence them from over here gets us. This banking leak, to me at least, is like the protests that take place in the downtown core of a large city. The normal people are impacted, the 1% just look down from the penthouse before boarding their helicopter. Sometimes you have to piss off enough of the regular people who are comfortable to get them to look up and see the people in the penthouse, and look down at the people under their own feet. Why yes, I’d love another splash of the bubbly, thank you. Cheers!
I doubt the answer is to fuck over the average Mohammad on the street, though, which is more or less what’s going on here. Releasing consumer information doesn’t hurt the rulers of these countries, but the citizens.
cue the violins
You’ve done an excellent job of taking my comment about some schadenfreude into a melodrama wherein I say that all people in the Mid East, including your friends and the average Mohammad on the street, deserve to have all of their personal data stolen. Bravo.
Come on, you know that’s not what I meant.
What I did mean was that hacks like this are touted as disruptive and victories of some sort, when in reality, they merely impact average folks - no matter where they happen. It’s very different from what say Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden, where their focus was on states and corporations, and how what they are doing is affecting us.
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