Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#231

Post by blisseyGo » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:13 AM UTC

phs318u wrote: post #118

blisseyGo wrote: post #69

I think people are still severely under-estimating how dangerous this was. Back in 2013 when The Associated Press was hacked with a tweet of "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured" and erased $136 billion in equity market value: Archive: http://archive.is/8lCMV https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/04/23... This twitter hack could have literally destroyed economies,…

Agreed. This was most likely a "shot across the bow" by a state actor. I have no proof of this. But it's highly public nature would seem to argue against a black-hat commercial interest (e.g. proof of potential to a possible buyer) as it would/will draw too much scrutiny. Also, the crystal clear implication that the damage done could have been far worse, would seem to indicate someone was sending a message. From whom…

Do we know if it was China? Could this be related to the Executive Order POTUS signed yesterday on Hong Kong Normalization?

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidents-e...

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#232

Post by edoceo » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:14 AM UTC

ZachPruckowski wrote: post #161

brown9-2 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it was dangerous, but nothing is “erased” if that market valuation is restored a few minutes later

In the aggregate sense, it eventually netted out. But a lot of people who sold when it looked like prices were collapsing sure got a pretty decent chunk of their bank accounts "erased".

Panic sellers always have that problem tho, regardless of the source of panic

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#233

Post by dmitryminkovsky » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:17 AM UTC

kryogen1c wrote: post #220

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Unquestionably” you’ve got to at least give an example. How did lives hang in the balance? I’m not saying the likelihood is 0, it’s best not to be irresponsible like this obviously, but come on, it’s not even 0.5.

> but come on i will not. affected persons included biden, kanye, obama, musk, bezos, gates and others. this is an audience in the 100's of millions (if not over a billion, i didnt count). do you honestly think theres no possible tweet that directly leads to someone's death, and likely many deaths? im not sure an outright war is > 50% possible, but i am sure it is > 0.0%

A war from hacked Tweets? What would these tweets say? “Premier Xi’s wife is ugly?” I mean Trump already tweets totally insane things regularly. “Rocket man” etc. what could joe Biden, bill gates or anyone possibly say on Twitter to start a war or even lead to some such mass death incident. Even “irresponsible” state actors like Iran would use intelligence channels to confirm things. Even the taliban doesn’t actually act irrationally. Maybe we need to agree to disagree here?

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#234

Post by dmitryminkovsky » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:18 AM UTC

blisseyGo wrote: post #229

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep saying it could have started a war. Excuse me for being naive but come on—really? This is total sensationalism. What party wouldn’t verify something on twitter through diplomatic channels before going to war? Equity destruction: sure. War: no way.

This hack simply proved that a lot bigger things are possible. They could have (maybe they did) read private messages which could simply be used for blackmail. A top defense official getting blackmailed is pretty easy step to escalation to broken diplomacy.

Blackmail yes, totally possible. I’m specifically addressing war though.

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#235

Post by wp381640 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:20 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #84

Tempest1981 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

see this, from earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23860584 "No, you couldn't have made more money than the Twitter hacker" https://fortenf.org/e/security/2020/07/15/twitter-hack.html

I don't buy the stock market argument. People open short positions worth more than $100K every day, especially against companies like Tesla. There would be nothing suspicious about a few such trades. But really, my point is that pulling off a sophisticated exploit involving major celebrities, politicians and CEOs, social engineering/bribery, internal access at a top company etc. doesn't really seem worth the risk if…

> There would be nothing suspicious about a few such trades.

Not on it's own, and not if you're starting the investigation with a large pool of trade data

But if you have 5, 10 or even 100 suspects from various forums and then join in any trading data along with a time window of opening/closing trades you very quickly end up with a suspect, a search warrant, an indictment, etc.

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#236

Post by wp381640 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:22 AM UTC

GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #72

spir wrote: post #67

Is it generally known that this hack was live for at least a few days, not just Wednesday? I personally saw one of the official @elonmusk scam tweets earlier this week.

I've been seeing similar scams in Elon's replies, they just copy his profile picture and name and reply with a different account. You might have seen that one

These have been going on for years and Twitter has never managed to put a stop to them. What happen on Wednesday seemed an inevitable escalation.

It doesn't help that Twitter's own CEO legitimises and normalises "twitter giveaway bonanza" tweets with his own Square Cash giveaways.

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#237

Post by shostack » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:27 AM UTC

blisseyGo wrote: post #69

I think people are still severely under-estimating how dangerous this was. Back in 2013 when The Associated Press was hacked with a tweet of "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured" and erased $136 billion in equity market value: Archive: http://archive.is/8lCMV https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/04/23... This twitter hack could have literally destroyed economies,…

This. It almost seems like a proof of concept for someone selling services to a bigger player, using the Bitcoin angle as a smokescreen.

Something like this right before the election or after could wreak havoc if targeted to the right accounts. I imagine certain state sponsors would pay handsomely for that.

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#238

Post by w7 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:29 AM UTC

xyst wrote: post #200

twodave wrote: post #176

I'm sure it's been said before, but I just continue to be surprised that the admin panel used to carry out this attack wasn't locked behind a VPN. I've worked for multiple fully-remote companies that were easily able to protect tools like this from the outside world. The company I currently work for (fully remote) has tons of internal services that our engineers (who we trust) can access as needed in order to debug p…

Internal networks only accessible via VPN is considered an anti-pattern now in terms of security. It puts authorization firmly on the VPN. If the account with VPN access is compromised, then the attacker has full access to these sensitive systems. This hack probably underscores the importance of zero trust. Although if the system is compromised from within (like this hack is) then there is not much you can do.

Does it though? Using a VPN for access to internal infrastructure doesn't mean said internal infrastructure is insecure or authless itself. As in, defense in layers.

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#239

Post by kortilla » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:29 AM UTC

blisseyGo wrote: post #69

I think people are still severely under-estimating how dangerous this was. Back in 2013 when The Associated Press was hacked with a tweet of "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured" and erased $136 billion in equity market value: Archive: http://archive.is/8lCMV https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/04/23... This twitter hack could have literally destroyed economies,…

The only people who lost money during the bid dry-up during that uncertainty were the people greedy enough to sell. I have no sympathy for people who try to time the market on bad news. Fake headlines is part of the bargain.

To be clear, that value wasn’t erased. The market makers just lowered their willing bid during the uncertainty.

Re: Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

#240

Post by alacombe » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:30 AM UTC

nuclearnice1 wrote: post #165

scubbo wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the off-chance that you're serious - doxxing someone who is suspected to be linked to a crime is staggeringly irresponsible, because you are then effectively convicting them in the court of public opinion. If they are innocent, but you have not only levelled accusations at them, but provided ways to access them, then you are partially responsible for what others choose to do with that information.

Isn’t most crime journalism the same? Three examples from the front page of the NY post right now. I am having a hard time figuring out how to distinguish this and the OP doxxing. The organizationS fact-checking process? Solidness of the evidence? > Allegations were made against longtime radio broadcaster Larry Michael (retired Wednesday), director of pro personnel Alex Santos (fired last week), assistant director of…

> Three examples from the front page of the NY post right now.

So does the NY Times, cf. the whole Slate Star Codex failure...