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

Who’s behind Wednesday’s epic Twitter hack?

krebsonsecurity.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 536 posts

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

#471

Post by crispyambulance »

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 twitter hack could have literally destroyed economies, started a war [...etc.]
Woah, slow your roll man, it takes a lot to start a war. And temporary glitches in the market are just that-- temporary glitches. If someone loses their shirt over that they deserve it.

It's not hackers which are the true danger, "legit" people abusing media (whatever it may be) are the threat, a good example would be the Stable Genius.

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

#472

Post by crispyambulance »

zestyping wrote: post #245
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.

War seems very possible. Wars start from smaller conflicts, which come about through escalation of smaller conflicts, lies, or misunderstandings. I think all that is necessary to start a war is a geopolitical event of sufficient severity to provoke a retaliation; once the first retaliation happens, there is high risk of further escalation. So the question is whether a deception on Twitter could trigger a real-world e…

  > War seems very possible.
No. While there may be a "last straw" event that precipitates the war, it take a lot of build up to lead to it.

A salty remark on twitter that is rapidly taken-back?? I don't think so.

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

#473

Post by 6510 »

crispyambulance wrote: post #472
zestyping wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War seems very possible. Wars start from smaller conflicts, which come about through escalation of smaller conflicts, lies, or misunderstandings. I think all that is necessary to start a war is a geopolitical event of sufficient severity to provoke a retaliation; once the first retaliation happens, there is high risk of further escalation. So the question is whether a deception on Twitter could trigger a real-world e…

> War seems very possible. No. While there may be a "last straw" event that precipitates the war, it take a lot of build up to lead to it. A salty remark on twitter that is rapidly taken-back?? I don't think so.

Just tell the truth, there is no way to rollback.

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

#474

Post by zipwitch »

lifeformed wrote: post #260
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.

Here's how I think it could be done: Get Trump's account, and tweet something like, "I've ordered a NUCLEAR STRIKE on China! The missiles are already in the air. The DEEP STATE is trying to take me out. They will try to silence me and delete these tweets and use deep fakes to say this was a hoax! The storm is here, Q is real, it's time to take up arms and kill democrats." Then continue tweeting escalating things over…

In SF author Neal Stephenson's latest book, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell there is a hoax to convince people that Moab, Utah has been destroyed by a nuclear weapon. A cyberattack takes the city's communications offline, paid actors describe seeing the flash and mushroom cloud from passenger planes, etc.

Twenty years later, a substantial part of American society is still insisting Moab really was nuked, drives around with "Remember Moab" bumper stickers, and considers the purported continued existence of Moab to be something like a Deep State plot.

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

#476

Post by scottlocklin »

dgellow wrote: post #453
peroporque wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German journalists do. Sadly.

French journalists too. It would be interesting to know what percentage of journalists/new people, are active on Twitter. I would expect them to be over represented given the amount of reports based or citing tweets, but I don’t know.

Frankly the biggest problem with twitter is journalists taking it seriously and abjuring their actual jobs of explaining what's going on in the world in favor of low effort no-information bullshit like "person X said Y on twitter." Literally nobody else with a life and a day job does. It's the comments section they removed from their websites.

The "muh stock market" argument is stupid; there are punters who take it seriously, and obviously, it's a great vola signal for automated traders. So what? Rumors were propagated before twitter and will be propagated long after it goes the way of other useless companies like pets dot com.

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

#477

Post by magnio »

ubercow13 wrote: post #469
ivanche wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around 96% of world population is outside the US. Consider your biases indeed.

What about the internet-using population? Supposedly only 60% of the world uses the internet whereas almost all of the US population does https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-populatio...

250 million non-US users to 4.3 billion Internet users (excluding the US) is about 5.8%. Compared that to 23% in the US.

Twitter is very US-centric.

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

#478

Post by senorjazz »

jobigoud wrote: post #378
aahhahahaaa wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're already logged in to a Twitter account you can deactivate 2FA by disabling the account (aka deleting with a 30 day window) and then re-enabling the account.

You don't need 2FA to deactivate 2FA? That seems like a big flaw.

twitter says hello

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

#479

Post by 50ckpuppet »

amatecha wrote: post #79
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,…

It's almost as if web services that let people post whatever they want at any time, vulnerable to whatever security flaws may be present, shouldn't be used as a reliable source for up-to-the-minute information about literally anything important at all.

bingo, except america is a nation of jittery anxious monkeys pumped full of unregulated oxycontin and anti-depressants.

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

#480

Post by blaser-waffle »

wyldfire wrote: post #328
dwd wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same could be said for radio, whether Orson Wells "Alien Invasion" broadcast or the multitude of April 1st jokes that got out of hand.

There's a documentary I saw that explains that the hubbub around Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast was just to cover up the arrival of Red Lectroids.

Regarding Red Lectroids, see also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Buckaroo_Ban...

Post reply on HN