> Booking has never encountered espionage before. The company isn't really looking for it either. As long as it doesn't cause any hindrance, it won't cost you any money. The unspoken consensus among specialists within the company is: we suspect that intelligence services are watching, but as long as we don't see them, we don't worry.
What should make me believe that they don't have the same approach towards black hat hackers which are silently farming their data?
How are foreign intelligence services not black hats? They are stealing data in order to use it for any number of non-nice things. Not selling the data on the dark web doesn't bleach their hats.
Keys are a pain in the ass to replace, and there is literally a set of 3 windows within reach in the porch that could be opened trivially.
The biggest feature of any lock is breaking into a locked house is a felony for the perp.
I'm not sure what the moral is. Your comment reminded me of this story.
Leaves guests bewildered when they come to stay.
Long time ago I had to upgrade my whole bloody alarm system of my old house because I wanted to insure a watch.
So the Hulk just knocked a hole in his stone castle wall next to the door, and walked into the lab.
That they are doing it for a 'good cause' (often debatable) is somewhat irrelevant, that is a risk/reward calculation that the country/agency/spy needs to make themselves.
If a a friendly country of the Dutch government wants to access records of a Dutch company (Booking.com), there are numerous legal methods to access this data. What's instead happening is that the CIA hacks NL companies and the Dutch RIVM hacks American ones and they share information/metadata with each other so that they can make and end-run around the legal constraints of both nations.
The AIVD is the Dutch intelligence service, the RIVM is the public health institute. I don't think even the most out-there of Dutch conspiracy theorists have accused the RIVM of hacking American companies on behalf of the CIA...
Both intelligence agencies and cyber-criminals can be considered threats, but they are quite different. Intel agencies would present a serious threat to confidentiality, but are very unlikely to threaten the integrity & availability of business systems.
> They are definitely black hats.
There's a fair argument to be made that they're grey hat. On the whole though I agree with you and you shouldn't give blanket trust to people performing these kinds of activities. I would just assign a bit different value to a black hat activity (illegal and/or harmful and only beneficial by accident if at all) vs grey hat activity (illegal and potentially harmful but attempting to be beneficial)
I would not count their fascist agenda a good cause. Inciting wars, performing illegal wars, putsching socialistic leaders neither, ...
If we don't know they exist... do they really exist?
Brilliant