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Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

krebsonsecurity.com

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

#381

Post by bosswipe »

mansion7 wrote: post #141
djmetzle wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. We've entered a world where the lowest common denominator of information is being used as primary source for current events. That's asinine.

That's partially because the sources formally seen as primary, at least in the US, have started to be viewed as biased and unreliable. This is largely through their own actions. Examples are legion, but a recent one is debacle at NYT over an op-ed. The news-consuming public was able to view the shenanigans of NYT reporters and staffers, which would formerly been done being the scenes. Many eyes were opened, and I'm c…

> This is largely through their own actions.

Or it could be the result of a decades long effort to attack credible authoritative institutions by forces that take a dim view of transparency and accountability.

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

#382

Post by kevingadd »

ycombobreaker wrote: post #354
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,…

That market value was recovered in 5 minutes. It sucks for anyone with stop orders, or anyone who got a margin call; but to say it could start wars is really not giving any credit to the humans in the loop.

Given that Donald Trump basically does policy-making in the open on Twitter these days and foreign countries now treat his account that way, there's an argument to be made that a false tweet on his account could at least push us in the direction of a war.

Thankfully, his account is under special 'lock and key' protection, so a regular CS rep can't hijack it.

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

#383

Post by cjohansson »

glitchc wrote: post #285
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,…

Oh please. The rest of the world doesn’t take Twitter as seriously as Americans do. And truth be told, Americans shouldn’t take it seriously either. The platform derives power from the audience. Stop giving it your power.

This is true I think. Twitter is mostly a US thing

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

#384

Post by jobigoud »

paulpauper wrote: post #17
sillysaurusx wrote: post #2

While it may sound ridiculous that anyone would be fooled into sending bitcoin in response to these tweets, an analysis of the BTC wallet promoted by many of the hacked Twitter profiles shows that on July 15 the account processed 383 transactions and received almost 13 bitcoin on July 15 — or approximately USD $117,000. This could be mostly the attackers’ own money. It’s impossible to tell, but I haven’t seen anyone…

no, ppl really are that gullible. twitter stream showed ppl lost money

> twitter stream showed ppl lost money

Bold move to trust the "twitter stream" in the middle of an impersonation hack.

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

#385

Post by jobigoud »

ValueNull wrote: post #227
dgut wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tweets didn't come from his handle. They were using the same image and name but what really caught my attention was that those accounts had a blue verified badge.

Yep, the newest strategy of the Twitter crypto scammers is to hack verified accounts of lesser-known users, then change the account name and profile picture to that of the user they wish to imitate.

Wait a minute, you can change the name of a verified account without going through verification again?

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

#386

Post by jansan »

mattoxic wrote: post #311
glitchc wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please. The rest of the world doesn’t take Twitter as seriously as Americans do. And truth be told, Americans shouldn’t take it seriously either. The platform derives power from the audience. Stop giving it your power.

So true. it's a toilet. A few months back I told myself no more, I resigned my account and haven't missed it at all. massive time sink, and utterly pointless. It isn't a conversation, it's yelling at a brick wall, then yelling louder when you don't get an answer.

Same here. I realized that using Twitter was just a great waste of time. Deleted my account, became more productive and happier.

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

#387

Post by lazysheepherd »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #197
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,…

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.

Exactly! Nothing major could have come out of this. If you disagree, please let me try to convince you;

Tweets were about bitcoin, therefore broad public was not the target of the attack.

Hence Twitter just prevented verified accounts from posting and deleted some messages. Had president's account been hijacked and threats of imminent nuclear strike etc. were thrown around, DoD would have been quick to contact to Twitter and they would have been disabled the whole account, put notifications about hijack for everyone to see (like these COVID notifications) or maybe even take the whole platform offline until they fix it.

You would click a link to go to the said tweet, but you'd only see president's account is not there, and there's a huge warning saying it has been hijacked, and devs are working to get it back. That's it.

Now please try to convince me otherwise, I'd love to be challenged on this.

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

#388

Post by telotortium »

jobigoud wrote: post #385
ValueNull wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the newest strategy of the Twitter crypto scammers is to hack verified accounts of lesser-known users, then change the account name and profile picture to that of the user they wish to imitate.

Wait a minute, you can change the name of a verified account without going through verification again?

Yep, @Noahpinion changes his like every week.

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

#389

Post by dwd »

vertak wrote: post #366
dwd wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust is a loaded concept. What people trust is generally what fits their worldview which is increasingly reinforced by the filter bubbles provided by tech companies. The increasing polarisation and tribalism is made worse by the traditional network programming and now algorithms that present what the audience is comfortable to see and hear. I like using DDG because it doesn't filter, but at the same time I hate wadi…

How often do you need to be the filter? I’m genuinely curious because your experience is very different from my own, where I’ve been using DDG for years and I only notice poor results roughly 1 in 100 of the times, and then I’m just a quick “g! ” away from slightly higher quality results.

Political news. G! does a better job of pushing smaller regional papers and more left/right leaning outlets and blogs down the rankings so the mainstream media gets more of a look in.

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

#390

Post by lazysheepherd »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #288
mongol wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this indeed had happened, I wonder how it would have played out. It would not be pretty, that is for sure.

Well let’s see...since all countries with ICBMs also have technology in place to detect or verify via satellite a nuclear launch, absolutely nothing would happen. If a real launch had taken place, they would have known about it far before they heard about a post on Twitter. The alarmism here on HN is really disappointing. This is the kind of foolishness usually reserved for Reddit.

Indeed! Where do people think USD 2tn/year for global military go? Weapons, yes, but also military intelligence, missile detecting and defense systems, radars, sonars, spy satellites, communication efficiency and disaster prevention.

Military is not _exactly_ ran-out-of-diazepam Dave with his hunting rifle and tinfoil hat.

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