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Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

wfla.com

61–70 of 702 posts

Re: Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

#61
post #53

(If this is actually the person behind the attacks) Yes he may serve jail time for this, but he did get to read DMs of some of these people, and has had enough time to copy those contents to be read later. That's still valuable knowledge, he should leverage this to get people interested in those details to fund his legal defense in return for providing the contents of the DMs. Or is that illegal?

Yes, that would be pretty illegal.

Re: Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

#62
post #4

Florida Man masterminds twitter attack.

Man = kid. He's only 17. I'm not a lawyer, but I thought it was illegal to put the names of minors in public for committing crimes.

the verge is reporting that he's being tried as an adult, so maybe that's the reasoning.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/31/21349920/twitter-hack-arr...

>He’s being charged as an adult, and the press conference made clear that law enforcement is considering how bad consequences of the hack could have been — not just the $100,000-plus in bitcoin that the teen is alleged to have scammed out of unsuspecting Twitter users.

Re: Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

#63
post #11

I was under the (apparently false?) assumption that under-18s couldn't be named. The alleged mastermind here is 17, yet is named and pictured. Interestingly, when I first checked this out ~8 minutes ago, they stated that they would not name the alleged mastermind due to the fact he was under 18. In the update ~4 minutes ago, they have removed that section and named him.

It has been a journalistic tradition done out of good faith not to print the names of accused minors. This has largely been done industry-wide under an implicit "gentleman's agreement." Similar traditions include not printing the names of victims of alleged rape victims or other sexual crimes.

But there's no law against it that I am aware of.

Re: Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

#64
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought this was for precisely the oppposite - i.e. that news headlines (edit: I mean whole articles) were more often "A Florida Man has been arrested" because they were not allowed/didn't have the names.

How many headlines about non-public figures have you seen that include someone's name? "Tim Jones has been arrested" isn't exactly an informative headline.

Well that's just taking things too literally. I meant the whole article would use "Florida man" instead of a name.

Re: Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

#65
This is all I can see on this page :

This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws.

It should not be this complicated to respect laws that just enforce minimal good practices.

A replacement link should be found for this story. Wfla dot com is clearly shit.

Re: Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

#66

My thoughts go to the fact they were able to hunt someone down based on their bitcoin address. Either they got help, this kid was already being watched or it just speaks to the DOJs data collection to all citizens.

The kid probably did not practice good OpSec. A single slip is all you need when you attack is so high-profile.

Re: Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

#67
post #22

No where in the article it mentions how did they nail him or how did he do. With Twitter saying that this entire process was done by social engineering some employee and then gaining system access of others by monitoring the process - this seems to have been done by someone with Corporate process understanding and hard to believe it could be a 18 yold.

Law enforcement rarely advertises investigative techniques and sources, even in open court. Some amount of evidence they do have was already presented to a grand jury, and will be brought to bear at trial if the defendant doesn't plead out.

Re: Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

#68
post #25

I actually think this kid has a bright future. My prediction: 1 year jail time, 5-10years probation. Will get hired as a security consultant.

I wouldn't hire him. It's not like he _programmed_ his way in. And he didn't just post tweets saying "Twitter's security is bad." He actively tried to scam people. So he wasn't trying to accomplish anything good.

Programming is a waste of time if you don’t need a program.

Re: Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought this was for precisely the oppposite - i.e. that news headlines (edit: I mean whole articles) were more often "A Florida Man has been arrested" because they were not allowed/didn't have the names.

I think using the term "Florida Man" is a meme now and probably carries more weight than using the accused's actual name. From the wikipedia article: > Miami New Times claimed that freedom of information laws in Florida make it easier for journalists to obtain information about arrests from the police than in other states and that this is responsible for the large number of news articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

I understand now, the headline reads "Florida Man arrested" and then the article will have "Bob Bobbinson was arrested today for ..."
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