Thursday, October 30, 2008

Signs of crisis?

I'm not sure whether this report is true. I don't use credit cards unless I have to - but I almost want to attempt to verify this report. I do know that many more people talk about the financial crisis here. I had a man I'm working with ask me today if I think the financial crisis will affect a particular grant. I don't think it will. Money gets put into the pipeline - and it would take something really earthshaking to move it out of the pipeline.

In fact, while the article talks about credit cards being refused, I don't really see many signs here of a business slowdown. Yesterday, I read an article about guest workers being stranded here - as their work contracts aren't renewed. But - the restaurants still have business. I don't notice more people sleeping on the street. Yet.

I did notice earlier this week that the ruble had weakened against the dollar - but today, the rates were back to what they had been. The government here has deep currency reserves to protect the value of the dollar. And there is a strong political reason for such action.

2 comments:

Ani said...

Well, I sure hope not, for personal reasons! I plugged in "credit cards" and "Aeroflot" into Google and got this story as well. Is this totally different, or the real reason??

http://security.itproportal.com/
articles/2008/10/29/hackers-force-
aeroflot-stop-selling-tickets/

Hackers force Aeroflot to stop selling tickets
Author: Steve Gold| Date: 29 Oct. 2008

Reports are coming in that Aeroflot, Russia's largest airline, has had to suspend selling tickets via its Web site after hackers gained heavy-duty access to the portal.

According to the Itar-Tass newswire, Aeroflot has confirmed its Web site was hacked on Monday of this week and, as a result, is unable to accept credit cards online.

"Our staff is working to resolve the problem, and the online service will become available again in a day or two," the airline said in a press statement.

Aeroflot isn't saying how the hackers gained access to its site, or to what degree they have managed to extract data.

Unconfirmed reports, however, suggest that the hackers used an SQL injection attack and managed to get root-level access to the site.

This could have given them access to all the card details of punters ordering tickets via the Web site in recent times, but that's only a theory. No doubt all will be revealed in due course...

Ani said...

Hmmm, Guardian report agrees with your story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/30/russia-market-turmoil