Who was behind that stunning Twitter hack? State spies? Probably this Florida kid, say US prosecutors Three individuals were charged on Friday for allegedly hijacking a string of high-profile Twitter accounts after hoodwinking the social network's staff. It is claimed a social-engineering-driven phishing campaign against Twitter employees led to the brief takeover on July 15 of 45 out of 130 targeted prominent accounts to …
My lack of confidence in Twitter is based on the fact that A) Its is a cesspool of ranting, one-upsmanship, vanity and attempted or actual cancellation of people, their social lives and careers without any kind of due process and B) SOME people get banned for saying unsubstantiated or opinionated things, but others who do the same thing get more followers and virtual back-pats. That people can hack Twitter accounts and post crazy or mercenary stuff was already so prevalent that the first thing a lot of people whose accounts do post crazy stuff on Twitter claim is that it only happened because their account was hacked.
Twitter's main purpose is to provide an ongoing morality tale, ala the 1950s scifi classic "Forbidden Planet", about the dangers of giving members of society the ability to project their internal ids into the broader world.
From the article (I think it was the AG...) "Increasingly we rely on platforms like Twitter to receive news and other information that is important to our lives,"
This is a level of stupidity reached in mankind. Redo from start?
Your lack of confidence in Twitter (and mine, and many other commentards' here), while grounded in sound observations is (sadly) meaningless, as 99.9% of humanity think, for one reason or another, that twitter is greatest thing on earth since facebook.
"99.9% of humanity think ... that twitter is the greatest thing on earth since facebook."
Which is ridiculous considering how the large majority of tweets are made by surprisingly small segment of the overall population. To be honest I don't know why anyone takes twitter so seriously.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/
Anderson announced the charges, in conjunction with federal officials from the FBI, the Secret Service, the IRS, and the UK's National Crime Agency.
"There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence,” he said in a statement. "Today's charging announcement demonstrates that the elation of nefarious hacking into a secure environment for fun or profit will be short-lived."
Grinding pomposities such as this sound better when not from some parochial local petty official: 'US Attorney for the Northern District of California' has all the dignitas of 'Chief Spokesperson, Milton Keynes Trading Standards'.
Particularly if you start with demented nonsense such as: "Increasingly we rely on platforms like Twitter to receive news and other information that is important to our lives,"
Not in the slightest.
.
And 'Wire Fraud' is always bogus bollocks anyway, tacked on to plump up alleged crime and add penalties.
.
The minor defendant is being prosecuted as an adult, the Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office said, "because Florida law allows minors to be charged as adults in financial fraud cases such as this when appropriate."
Of course he is. Why permit legal protections for different classes of persons if they get in the way of a conviction ? Plus of course, if a 15 yr-old mugs someone and beats them up he will be charged as a child; if he commits Financial Fraud --- the very worst kind of fraud there is --- he will be charged as an adult. Almost as if the American God is Money.
But it was a funny prank, and if the targets hadn't been beloved Liberal Legends then we would have had a Hollywood Caper movie to look forward to starring Mr. Hanks, Mr. Clooney and up and coming whatevers, with dedicated young beautiful FBI agents and Justice officials tracking the miscreants down.
A cross between War Games and Ocean's Eleven.
I’ve seen the movie
The kid makes a plea bargain and becomes a renowned security consultant, planting his feet on a succession of boardroom tables around the world. One day he realised he may have met his match as a series of sophisticated attacks overwhelm his clients.
Now desperate, he agrees to meet his new nemesis. Imagine his surprise as he finds himself face to face with (foreign, of course) femme fatale. After a few awkward meetings, they realise that love conquers all and they jointly turn against the evil state sponsoring her attacks
Then they all lived happily ever after
>sophisticated financial fraud...
I think it depends on your definition of "sophisticated", given we are talking about people who get their news from Twitter, the bar is very low.
There is nothing I've seen from the article to suggest the financial fraud was anything other than basic scamming.
If he's committed an adult crime (i.e. sophisticated financial fraud, not just nicked a car) then he has shown that he should be treated as an adult. Age has little to do with it.
V. I. Lenin agreed with you; and implemented this for those over the age of 11.
Particularly if you start with demented nonsense such as: "Increasingly we rely on platforms like Twitter to receive news and other information that is important to our lives,"
Not in the slightest.
You might want to rethink that. You may not rely on Twitter for news directly, but I am increasingly under the impression that mainstream and every other news source does. To the point where the bulk of many news articles consists of screenshots of tweets and a staggering proportion of news items is rooted in someone tweeting something, which becomes news in and of itself.
I certainly agree it is demented nonsense, but it also seems to have become demented reality. Disturbingly, it makes the above quote factually correct...
@cb7
Excuse me.
My fave news sites always have something on their front page every day from twi77er about something so seriously stupid that it makes my day (The Orange One, included).
Let The Orange One use twi77er, please, and all the other famous knobs, too... coz, like, news sites wouldn't exist without it and them.
I know that sucks... just... just laugh at it.
The Orange One is banning tiktok!! Hahaha!!! It's going to be interesting to see how this pans out. Force the Chinese to sell it to Microsoft? LOL!!!!!
Ah diddums. An Atlantic journalist, self describes as a member of Twitter's "obsessive elite", got locked out of his account and now the sky is falling - at least that seemed to be where he was heading when I baled out of his rant.
>I baled out of his rant
I stayed with the 'plane after you took the only parachute, you demon. In fact, Mr Bogost, the journalist, only self-describes as a twitter obsessive to establish his standing. His point, in a nutshell, is that the original (as in ARPANet) USP for an internetwork which will survive bits of it being melted (packet switching, OSPF and all that), is compromised or made irrelevant when the things being linked together are massive monopolies with fragile security. This was not quite so in the early days of weB LOGging, when people used their own web sites to log their (possibly vacuous) news, thoughts and opinions.
On a little piece of wood,
Mr. Spikky Sparrow stood;
Mrs. Sparrow sate close by,
A-making of an insect pie,
For her little children five,
In the nest and all alive,
Singing with a cheerful smile
To amuse them all the while,
Twikky wikky wikky wee,
Wikky bikky twikky tee,
Spikky bikky bee!
When America come knocking with an extradition request for Mason Sheppard, I do hope the UK Government says no.
Extradition goes both ways, Anne Sacoolas is now on an Interpol Red Notice for the death of Harry Dunn, and yet the US refuses to extradite. Diplomatic Immunity is about preventing frivolous allegations against diplomats, it is not a licence to commit crimes. The evidence exists for the CPS to proceed with a trial, the US has been given that evidence in an extradition request, they have actively decided not to comply. I think most people would agree the death of Mr Dunn is significantly more serious than the hack against Twitter.
Velv> When America come knocking with an extradition request for Mason Sheppard, I do hope the UK Government says no.
Ha ha ha. I think you have totally misunderstood the UK's position/standing in the "special relationship" and how the US-UK extradition treaty is worded.
Got valid US warrant? Must extradite.
>Ha ha ha. I think you have totally misunderstood the UK's position/standing in the "special relationship" and how the US-UK extradition treaty is worded.
Yes, we know how many spineless occupiers of No 10 there have been, including the current one.
>Got valid US warrant? Must extradite.
Valid to the UK courts...
> was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and the intentional access of a protected computer.
>Conspiracy to commit wire fraud: just a heresay catch all, will need some hard evidence for a UK court.
>conspiracy to commit money laundering - not seen evidence of money laundering, yes, evidence of obtaining monies by deception - but that's not money laundering...
>the intentional access of a protected computer - Well no crime here, you access Twitter, you are intentionally accessing a protected computer.
Looks like this could be another one where the UK courts tell the US to redo their homework...
earl grey,
" time for chokey
until he's too old to remember what twatter was."
Nope !!!
Here's why ......
1. There are more important things than Twitter to deal with !!! *
2. By now Twitter and other Social Networking platforms have been abused and hacked so many times you are an idiot if you put your life on it and expect privacy of any kind.
3. See 1.
4. Locking up a kid for many years achieves nothing useful ...... certainly will not stop future hacks etc
5. BTW remember 1.
* Coronavirus COVID worldwide epidemic, mad man in the Whitehouse, another mad man in the Kremlin, China flexing its muscles with little *real* pushback by the 2 mad men, Global economic pain due to the 'COVID' thing, people in general not realising COVID is still there with 'No Cure Yet !!!!, lots of people dead due to COVID and many more to come in the 3rd world (yes ... it is not just the US of A ) & so on ad nauseam.
> Hacking in 2020
To be fair, it's been the simplest way to defeat security since forever. Break open the clay tablet, borrow and copy the key, gift the city with a really cool horse, bribe the portcullis guard, blackmail the bank manager, email spoof the security admin, rubber-hose decrypt the bitcoin wallet.
So the story seems to be that Twitter, a large web based company, who employ probably, hundreds of security staff and software engineers have been hacked by three or four teenagers, presumably with no formal education in computer security.
This company seems to make money by offering a service to allow some of it's users to annoy the rest of it's users, who must like being annoyed or otherwise they would not use the service.
The security services of the US and UK are now busy basking in the glory of managing to trace these kids.
WTF
Why haven't we offered these kids jobs in counter espionage?
Problem is it's the US. Security is all talk and posture and no action and has been like this for decades.
You only need to look at previous 'hacking' cases involving teenagers to see that they hacked supposedly security US military systems, which weren't actually secure; teenagers prosecuted, no change to system security, so systems ready for the next bunch of teenage hackers - its almost like the US's idea of security is to use their production systems as honeypots...
You'll only start to see change when another western leader publicly laughs at the US and dismisses these types of cases. However, can't see the current UK government having the balls to do anything other than meekly comply.
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