Banking strike on Friday threatens to shut down ATMs and Internet banking

[Willie Trombone]

Agreed with both of you. I was responding more to the (to me) snarky "DDoS and CISP" comment, as that is not the only way to take down an internet-facing resource. Fastest way - take down the servers involved.

Also, for a DDoS the banks have the financial resources to get a service like CloudFlare to help them. And they can move the servers to a cloud environment, making that kind of attack very hard to execute. So I don't expect much to happen on Internet banking.

You think Banks can just lift and shift their infrastructure like that? LOL.

 

[Moto Guzzi]

South African banking strike threatens to shut down ATMs and Internet banking

The South African Society of Bank Officials (SASBO), the largest finance union in the country, is planning to go ahead with a country-wide strike on Friday.

The union is protesting against job losses and retrenchments in the South African banking sector as a result of digitisation and closing bank branches.

I thought the banks was loaded. Stricking and protesting had now become an unintentional socialising event where the criminals can jump in easy ror a ride along with destructions, and seeing it developed as TREND, it will be difficult to get rid of.

 

[ToxicBunny]

You think Banks can just lift and shift their infrastructure like that? LOL.

For front end stuff it wouldn't surprise me if they could

 

[system32]

Q. Has a union ever created jobs?

These guys are striking for no good reason.

Does SASBO have a 50%+1 mandate from members to strike?

 

[w1z4rd]

If capital can organize (and it does), so can labor.

Its really against your own best interest not to unionize. Unless you are a shareholder and dont want your labor fighting for more rights..

 

[Slootvreter]

They didn't say which employees. If you can get a system admin to take down the front-end web servers or change the DNS settings, then internet banking will at least be disabled for the public. But I don't see that working as well as they intend, as I am sure that has redundancy and can be restored fairly quickly.

That will surely see him lose his job, and the union won't be able to protect him.

 

[w1z4rd]

Dont be a vandal when unionizing, you can delegitimize the legitimate concerns. As it is union busters will be going into the strikes trying to cause problems in the strikers name to delegitimize them. Watch out for these people .

 

[3WA]

Dont be a vandal when unionizing, you can delegitimize the legitimate concerns.

That ship has sailed. Very few unions have legitimacy these days because most of them either have a history of vandalism themselves, or they fall under an umbrella (COSATU) that is tolerant of vandalism.

 

[w1z4rd]

Take responsibility for your unions. Things aint going to get better for these people unless they organize themselves. No one else is ganna help them.

 

[3WA]

Take responsibility for your unions. Things aint going to get better for these people unless they organize themselves. No one else is ganna help them.

To me the long-term solution is at the level of the individual. You look at the industry that employs you, you predict trends, you determine what skills are going to be valuable in the future, you get training. At a group level, unions don't encourage this at all. You never hear union leaders saying that they want retraining or skills development in their mass rhetoric (maybe they say it behind closed doors).

In a sense, when it comes to strike action, unions almost seem to disadvantage their more ambitious members because they have to appeal to the lowest common denominator (who is a guy with four kids to support and no qualifications or ambition).

Not arguing against the value of union support for things like unfair dismissal etc.

 

[w1z4rd]

No, I disagree strongly with your strategy, the individual doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell. Its like a goose farting into a hurricane.Their best chance is with the power of collective bargaining.

Capital is organized. It probably owns most of the union bosses already. This is why its important to take charge and responsibility of your unions instead of allowing "career unionists" to run the show.

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

They didn't say which employees. If you can get a system admin to take down the front-end web servers or change the DNS settings, then internet banking will at least be disabled for the public. But I don't see that working as well as they intend, as I am sure that has redundancy and can be restored fairly quickly.

That's sabotage. Everything is logged and the people responsible will be caught fired and there's nothing they can do to get their job back after that. They will also be etched into a little black book that will prevent them from being employed at any bank.

There's lots of smart IT people employed by the banks. Their jobs are not in jeopardy and they know it, and won't risk losing it for somebody else's cause...

 

[AfricanTech]

They didn't say which employees. If you can get a system admin to take down the front-end web servers or change the DNS settings, then internet banking will at least be disabled for the public. But I don't see that working as well as they intend, as I am sure that has redundancy and can be restored fairly quickly.

Any sysadmin dumb enough to do that will be out on their arse so fast

 

[Hamster]

Geez, the stupid in this thread.

-----

Realistically they can try block employee access to the data centers like Samrand and hope for a problem.

AWS - unless they are already on it (I think Investec is) there's no way they'll move onto it by Friday. For a good old South African bank that'll be a year or more's planning alone.

DDoS attack is not realistic anyway unless you get help. Your going to need substantial computing power to take a bank down nevermind seven of them.

No, the South African way to do this is with violence, intimidation and physical disruption of services. There will be nothing smart or clever about it. The unions can't even spell DDoS.

 

[Willie Trombone]

For front end stuff it wouldn't surprise me if they could

Front end stuff require secure interfaces and channels to effect back end transactions. Banks can't even produce simple innovative solutions without months of red tape...

 

[Jopie Fourie]

Geez, the stupid in this thread.

The unions can't even spell DDoS.

They can't, but if the money is right and they do have a few million laying around.... I am sure they can be helped out.

 

[Hamster]

They can't, but if the money is right and they do have a few million laying around.... I am sure they can be helped out.

That few million Rand will need to buy enough power to take down nervous servers across multiple data centers including cloud providers for:

Standard Bank
Nedbank
ABSA
FNB
Capitec
Investec
Tyme
Discovery
Bidvest
African Bank

If they pull it off it will be one of the biggest terror events of the 21st century. Tje Rand will tank, the JSE will take a huge hit...Movies will be made!

It's ridiculous.

 

[Stonemason]

No, I disagree strongly with your strategy, the individual doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell. Its like a goose farting into a hurricane.Their best chance is with the power of collective bargaining.

Actually, the best way to remain poor is to unionise. If you are a hard worker you will soon be recognised by management as such and will get a better salary and faster promotion. However, if you are stupid enough to join a union, management will be forced to give you the same salary as the morons around you and will find it difficult to promote you.

 

[w1z4rd]

The "union gevaar" is real. Thats money well spent by organized capital.

 

[Enzo Matrix]

They will toy toy and burn sht

Nothing else.

Ddos lmao