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Company Gets 45,000 Bad Facebook Reviews After Teenaged Hacker's Unjust Arrest (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader quotes BleepingComputer:
Over 45,000 users have left one-star reviews on a company's Facebook page after the business reported a security researcher to police and had him arrested in the middle of the night instead of fixing a reported bug. The arrest took place this week in Hungary after an 18-year-old found a flaw in the online ticket-selling system of Budapesti Közlekedési Központ, Budapest's public transportation authority. The young man discovered that he could access BKK's website, press F12 to enter the browser's developer tools mode, and modify the page's source code to alter a ticket's price. Because there was no client or server-side validation put in place, the BKK system accepted the operation and issued a ticket at a smaller price...
The teenager -- who didn't want his name revealed -- reported the issue to BKK, but the organization chose to contact the police and file a complaint, accusing the young man of hacking their systems... BKK management made a fatal mistake when they brazenly boasted in a press conference about catching the hacker and declaring their systems "secure." Since then, other security flaws in BKK's system have surfaced on Twitter. As details of the case emerged, public outrage grew against BKK and its manager Kálmán Dabóczi, especially after it was revealed that BKK was paying around $1 million per year for maintenance of its IT systems, hacked in such a ludicrously simple manner.
The teenager -- who didn't want his name revealed -- reported the issue to BKK, but the organization chose to contact the police and file a complaint, accusing the young man of hacking their systems... BKK management made a fatal mistake when they brazenly boasted in a press conference about catching the hacker and declaring their systems "secure." Since then, other security flaws in BKK's system have surfaced on Twitter. As details of the case emerged, public outrage grew against BKK and its manager Kálmán Dabóczi, especially after it was revealed that BKK was paying around $1 million per year for maintenance of its IT systems, hacked in such a ludicrously simple manner.
...for your own reviewing and commenting enjoyment: https://www.facebook.com/bkkbu...
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
A network glitch turns this into 128 tickets, and the server charges your card for 128 tickets.
Umm, No.
TCP/IP (specifically the transport layer) handles packet integrity. What gets sent is what is delivered or nothing at all. Client side validation's only purpose is to ensure that the user is informed when they have entered invalid information so that they can correct their mistake. If you are trying to use it any other way, I hope you are not a professional web developer.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Since I'm a local, let me also add this for the human resources aspect of the story:
Another reason for the hurried introduction of the inscure, unfinished BKK online ticket sales system was that the Mr. Kalman Daboczy, whom the referenced article mentioned by name, is not the original leader of BKK.
Before him there was David Vitezy, an admittedly weird, but very bright, internationally educated jewish boy, who got to form and lead the BKK at a young age, solely due to his family's high political connections yet turned out to be highly motivated. In a few years Vitezy introduced a computerized schedule-control system called FUTAR for over 1500 buses which revolutionized on-timeliness in circulation, a quantum leap from the paper-based BKV era and welcomed by all pax.
He also introduced private sub-contracting for bus line operations with run-time based financing, which brought in hundreds of brand new low floor, low pollution Merc and Volvo vehicles to Budapest, where previously only Cold War era (!) left-over smoking wreckages circulated. He managed to extend the lenght of the city's most important tram line and furnish it with modern rolling stock by successfully claiming EU funds for development, which was considered impossible to get by all parties. He created a public bicycle-sharing system called BUBI from zero and integrated it with BKK. Genius, I'd say.
Eventually Vitezy was sacked from BKK as he tried to reform traffic light patterns and lane use rights to prioritize bus and tram circulation versus private cars, which limousine-riding politicians vetoed. Mr. Daboczy, who replaced him is a "mameluk" i.e. a person whose only skill is loyalty to political superiors in executing orders without questions, including hurtful or stupid ones, and he is without creative talent. Ever since BKK has been stagnating and the city's population eventually questioned why no public transit development happens since Vitezy left? Thus the online ticket selling system was kind of an attempt to show off the new leadership's competence but it backfired spectacularly. The opposition is now demanding Daboczy's removal from BKK due to the scandal.
BTW, when David Vitezy was sacked from BKK, the Port Authority of New York reportedly tried to woo him over to advise on future plans for public transport development in the skyscraper city. He declined to emigrate, probably the mistake of his life, as ever since he has been given mere "desk by the window" roles in Hungary. I'd say if he'd left for USA, maybe in 15 years he could have been properly groomed in America and come back as a potential future PM of Hungary. That, provided the russians don't conquer our country again in the meanwhile...