alt Hacker NewsWith a broad statement like this, I would usually just suggest this is inflammatory and surely overstated.
However, I've also worked at a financial institution which used core systems by Harland Financial Systems. Their "encryption" for data in transit from teller workstations to the core system was just a two byte XOR, and they sent the key at the beginning of the connection!
Was so unbelievable to be able to crack this in under a half-hour after noticing patterns in a PCAP. Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.
That fraud was good enough for our regulators and theirs, so I have no doubt the industry is filled with rotten incompetence through and through.
The biggest disappointment in my 30 years of adulting has been how much absolute, shameless incompetence is out there in the workforce. When I was a kid, I naively thought that adults were smart and knew what they are doing. Then I got into industry and saw so many people just outright bluffing for 8 hours a day before going home, day in and day out.
It's amazing that society even functions at all.