Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Doxing the hero who stopped WannaCry was irresponsible and dumb

thenextweb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 117 posts

Re: Doxing the hero who stopped WannaCry was irresponsible and dumb

#71

Post by rfrank »

Nadya wrote: post #37
dagw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If some journalists were able to find his identity, he can safely assume that the people behind wannacry are also able to do it. How do you figure? Digging through information and finding out this sort of stuff is literally what journalists do for a living.

I occasionally offer to dox people to show them how bad their OpSec truly is or as an example of why I don't use social media like Facebook for privacy concerns. Doxing people is often trivial since nearly anyone contributing to discussions online have large online profiles. It isn't a very difficult task - just a game of connecting the dots and knowing how to construct specific Google search queries (eg: "site:___ +…

> If a journalist can find it - any internet layman who knows how to Google can find it.

News organizations have access to many non-public databases.

Re: Doxing the hero who stopped WannaCry was irresponsible and dumb

#72

Post by Zak »

Nadya wrote: post #59
Zak wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate it when people use these scripts and do have a rule against deleting posts that have replies in one subreddit I moderate. There are two kinds of things harmed by this behavior: * In communities where people buy and sell things, or offer pay for services (e.g. /r/forhire), a glance at someone's account history provides some insight into their likely reliability. It's not much to go on, but that's inherent to do…

>In communities where people buy and sell things, or offer pay for services (e.g. /r/forhire), a glance at someone's account history provides some insight into their likely reliability. It's not much to go on, but that's inherent to doing business with strangers online. Trivially solvable with an alias used exclusively for such dealings where you don't scrub history. Also, as mentioned, it isn't necessarily that good…

I'll grant this for that technique: while your website linked to your username here made it easy to guess your reddit username, 5 minutes of looking did not recover your deleted comments.

It's a little difficult for me to wrap my head around the mindset though: if you're concerned about privacy, why would you post anything sensitive to reddit? If you haven't posted anything sensitive, why delete it? I'll admit, I've never been the victim or perpetrator of doxxing, so I may be missing something.

Re: Doxing the hero who stopped WannaCry was irresponsible and dumb

#73

Post by rawnlq »

Spare_account wrote: post #42
Nadya wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I occasionally offer to dox people to show them how bad their OpSec truly is or as an example of why I don't use social media like Facebook for privacy concerns. Doxing people is often trivial since nearly anyone contributing to discussions online have large online profiles. It isn't a very difficult task - just a game of connecting the dots and knowing how to construct specific Google search queries (eg: "site:___ +…

I've been wondering if it is possible to dox my Reddit account. I like to think I've been careful not to give too much away but I wonder if it is true. I would like to find a white hat site that prepares a report on what they can find about you. (For the record, my reddit account has a different username than my HackerNews account)

There's a reddit account summarizer (I know you said you don't own /u/spare_account on reddit, this is just an example):

https://www.snoopsnoo.com/u/Spare_Account

Re: Doxing the hero who stopped WannaCry was irresponsible and dumb

#75

Post by kingosticks »

soundwave106 wrote: post #41
gadders wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the Sun, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail. Only on of those belongs to Murdoch.

A better way to put it would be to say all of the UK tabloid papers (the Mirror was also mentioned in the article). Tabloid journalism doesn't exactly have a stellar history of responsibility. Unfortunately this sells for some reason.

Is the Telegraph really a tabloid? It's hardly on the same scale as the others presented here (and in the article).

Re: Doxing the hero who stopped WannaCry was irresponsible and dumb

#76

Post by [deleted] »

thrownblown wrote: post #34
dagw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If some journalists were able to find his identity, he can safely assume that the people behind wannacry are also able to do it. How do you figure? Digging through information and finding out this sort of stuff is literally what journalists do for a living.

Digging through information and finding out this sort of stuff is literally what hackers do for a living for lack of a better term

[deleted]

Re: Doxing the hero who stopped WannaCry was irresponsible and dumb

#77

Post by cpncrunch »

>To the hacks at The Telegraph, MalwareTech will always be some sad basement-dwelling hacker nerd.

No, actually. They're showing that he fits into the archetypical British bedroom hacker/programmer genius, which is very highly respected in the UK, and produced the likes of Matthew Smith, David Braben, etc. It looks like the author of this article wasn't around in the 80s, so perhaps he's not familiar with this history.

edit I fit into this category myself, and I'm not offended at all.

Re: Doxing the hero who stopped WannaCry was irresponsible and dumb

#78

Post by Pica_soO »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #51
Nadya wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I occasionally offer to dox people to show them how bad their OpSec truly is or as an example of why I don't use social media like Facebook for privacy concerns. Doxing people is often trivial since nearly anyone contributing to discussions online have large online profiles. It isn't a very difficult task - just a game of connecting the dots and knowing how to construct specific Google search queries (eg: "site:___ +…

I often think about the Witness Protection Program and how much harder it must be to be a part of it in the age of social media and new forms of instant communication. While it's hard enough to cut off ties with family and friends, etc., it must be much worse when there are so many ways to keep in touch with people. Worse, I can't imagine someone in the program would be able to have any kind of online presence. It wo…

the worst doxxing source are github repos. One wrong reflex to sign in as author of a new class, one insider joke - and boom, there is the way to trace - never going away.

Re: Doxing the hero who stopped WannaCry was irresponsible and dumb

#79

Post by stuffedBelly »

It’s obvious that he just wants to be left alone to get on with what he enjoys – hacking shit, and figuring out how stuff works

No, he wants to be left alone because it endangers his life to reveal his identity. Jesus, do people seriously expect someone that's done heroic deeds like this to jump out and scream "I am Batman"???

Re: Doxing the hero who stopped WannaCry was irresponsible and dumb

#80

Post by [deleted] »

rfrank wrote: post #71
Nadya wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I occasionally offer to dox people to show them how bad their OpSec truly is or as an example of why I don't use social media like Facebook for privacy concerns. Doxing people is often trivial since nearly anyone contributing to discussions online have large online profiles. It isn't a very difficult task - just a game of connecting the dots and knowing how to construct specific Google search queries (eg: "site:___ +…

> If a journalist can find it - any internet layman who knows how to Google can find it. News organizations have access to many non-public databases.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN