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YYou have just arrived at the hotel after a delayed flight and a half hour of argument with the car rental company. And then, you remember that you forgot to pay the credit card bill last month and that there will be interest charges if you wait to be back at the base. But hello! – You can do it online and help is at hand. The receptionist is welcoming and helpful. They have wifi and it's free. Relieved, you ask for the pbadword. "Oh, you do not need it," he replies. "Just type your room number and click on the box."
Phew! Problem solved. Uh, not necessarily. At this point, the human race is divided into two groups. Call them sheep and goats. Sheep are gentle and confident people who like to think of their peers. This helpful receptionist certainly can not knowingly offer a dangerous service. In addition, they find digital technology confusing and intimidating. And they can not imagine why everything they do online could interest anyone.
Goats, on the other hand, have a mean and suspicious mind. They believe that many of their peers may be ready to do something. They believe that in this networked world, only the paranoid survive. So when they see a free and open wifi network, they smell the rat. And they would never, ever, send confidential information via such a channel.
Unfortunately, in this particular context, goats are wiser than sheep. They know that hotel chains have become a coveted target of pirates. Several of the major operators in the industry have reported data breaches in recent years, including big names such as Hilton, InterContinental, Marriott and Hyatt. Most of these attacks, according to Bloomberg, focus on the property management systems used by hotel chains to take reservations, issue room keys and store credit card data.
the Bloomberg The report, written by Patrick Clark, is based on the exploits of a "white hat" hacker team to test the security of a given system. After plugging the smart TV's Internet cable from the bedroom onto a laptop, they entered the hotel's PMS, which led to the corporate system of the owner of the channel. In doing so, they had access to credit card information for several years of operation in dozens of hotels. And if they had been crooks, the team could have sold the information on the black market, where a Visa card with a high credit limit can go up to $ 20.
Why are hotels such tempting targets? In part because their systems are easy to penetrate technically. "Host companies," writes Clark, "have long regarded technology as antithetic to human contact, which represented a quality service. The industry's admirable habit of promoting from the bottom up means that it is common to find IT managers who started their careers with baggage. Former grooms might be able to understand how a hotel works better than a software engineer, but that does not mean they understand the architecture of the network. "
Vulnerability is also a reflection of a professional culture. After all, hospitality is about welcoming customers and trying to anticipate – and meet – their needs. Nowadays, everyone expects to have free Wi-Fi access, so why not give it to them in the easiest way possible? No problem with pbadwords and tedious login procedures; Simply type in the room number and click "OK" From the point of view of hackers, the hospitality sector is an excellent opportunity: it's easy to choose hotel reservation records, as well as juicy personal information about sheep using unsecured wifi networks.
And it's not just hackers who are attracted to these jars of honey, by the way. The director of any intelligence service that has not been part of the Trump Hotel's internal systems in Washington since his election, for example, should be fired for incompetence.
In the meantime, what can vacationers on trips do to protect themselves? In short, you need to invest and install Virtual Private Network (VPN) software on any device that comes with you. A VPN operates as an encrypted tunnel to a special server somewhere on the Internet. If you connect to Observer For example, via a VPN, the VPN server connects to the paper on your behalf. And as all traffic is encrypted, it is cluttered with any snooper, which means you can safely use the wifi networks of hotels (and cafes) wherever you are.
The only drawback is that this unlimited protection is not free, alas, so expect to pay an annual fee. (Some services are free but have restrictions on the use of data or the number of devices or services you can access.) TechRadar provides a useful guide to the best VPN networks. Remember that only paranoids survive. And enjoy the rest of your vacation.
What I read
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C-span has a long and fascinating interview with Bill Gates. It's funny to think that it was once as odious as Mark Zuckerberg is now.
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The Sony Walkman is 40 years old this month. Business Insider marked the occasion with an intriguing summary of what happened to recorded music in four decades.
I've had enough
Want to know what does the departure of Apple designer Jony Ive mean? There is a very interesting conversation (via Daring Fireball) between Jon Gruber and Stratechery's Ben Thompson on the subject.
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