Burger King's tweets fried after hijackers pimp Big Macs Pranksters hijacked Burger King's official Twitter feed on Monday and turned it into a advertising stream for arch-rival McDonald's. The usual promotional content on @BurgerKing was replaced by updates referencing McDonald's, rap videos, Anonymous and lax password security at the fast food giant. "Somebody needs to tell …
quote: "Guessing an insecure password is a hacking now? Really?"
Yes, really. Gaining unauthorised access to a computer system, including but not limited to already knowing the password, but not being "authorised" to log in to it at the time you logged in, is a crime. With custodial sentencing.
It's to remove culpability from corporations for lax password and account security, and place it squarely on the person. There are several servers at work which I have root to, however if I have not signed the access forms and got them authorised beforehand, I could be in big trouble. :)
"maybe they just want to find out how much horse is in their burgers"
The thing I find interesting is that the horse meat scandal *did* include fast food joints like BK. In the US, these firms maintain(ed) very tight traceability on their supply chains. It's mostly to be able to easily defeat "finger in my burger" lawsuits - they can trace a burger back to a particular slaughterhouse on a particular day, and the investigation reveals that no, there wasn't a severed-finger incident on that day. Despite this, there's a series of fine upstanding citizens[*] who sue BK, McDonalds, and others for this. It's never true.
(ed) in brackets because I don't know if this is still the case.
[*] translation: prime f*ckwits.
>> In the US, these firms maintain(ed) very tight traceability on their supply chains. >>
That's been true over here for the last couple of decades. The amount of paperwork involved is extremely high. (I know this having worked in a slaughterhouse for 5 years, some 12 years ago; one that supplied about 20% of the beef to the burger processing plant for McDonalds). The beef all came from UK and Eire; none came from outside of the UK.
They knew which animals went into the production facility, what food they had during their lives, what medical treatment, where they had been and when they had travelled between farms. They knew their dams and sires going back over 30 generations; and although the DB was a bit antiquated by todays standards, they could still analyse it to see if there were any medical abnormalities in related animals.
"A faction of Anonymous claimed responsibility for the hack, which took place yesterday on Presidents' Day, a national holiday in the US. However, other parts of Anonymous are claiming innocence, so it's hard to tell who is to blame beyond "anonymous" people on the internet."
Reminds me of Douglas Adams - The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.
"When a passenger check-in desk at Terminal Two, Heathrow Airport, shot up through the roof engulfed in a ball of orange flame the usual people tried to claim responsibility. First the IRA, then the PLO and the Gas Board. Even British Nuclear Fuels rushed out a statement to the effect that the situation was completely under control, that it was a one in a million chance, that there was hardly any radioactive leakage at all and that the site of the explosion would make a nice location for a day out with the kids and a picnic, before finally having to admit that it wasn’t actually anything to do with them at all. "
On the "highlighted articles" scroller on the front page, each article has a little picture. Why does the one for this story feature a picture taken from the Franco-Belgian[*] chain Quick? (The "Dark Vader" burger, one of a Dark Side / Light Side pair issued semi-recently in a marketing link-up with Lucasarts. For I don't know what reason, the "Darth" in "Darth Vader" was localised to "Dark" in the French versions of Star Wars material.)
[*] Quick is of Belgian origin, but the majority shareholder these days is an arm of the French government.
You've got a combination on your luggage? Blimey, if the baggage handler at the airport wants to rummage through my socks and pants then good luck to them. They'd do it with or without a lock, but my way they only trash your bag throwing it at the aircraft rather than cutting their way in round the zip (allegedly...)
So they hacked the feed, and the most imaginative thing they could think to do was put up a few adverts for McDonalds? Pft. Surely something like "to celebrate Presidents Day, we're giving away a free Whopper to anyone who shows this tweet" would have got more attention, and been retweeted a fair bit....
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