Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

Post by qppo » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 8:16 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #183

slg wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The age of the attacker is irrelevant to Twitter's role in this story. However your underlying point still stands. If we want these types of attacks to stop, we can't just let all these companies off with a public embarrassment being the primary punishment. At a certain point we have to start calling it negligence when companies fall for these attacks and fail to have proper precautions in place to prevent them.

From memory, I recall the FBI did a study, and found that half of their employees would plug in a USB drive that they found on the ground in the parking lot. After training, that number was reduced to a quarter. If a security-focused government police agency is so vulnerable, it is unreasonable to expect perfection from a (less paranoid) company.

Post by onetimemanytime » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 8:16 PM UTC

Taek wrote: post #131

Hitting a 17yo with 30 felony charges feels a bit steep to me. Also should any repercussions be considered against Twitter that a 17yo was able to gain access to the private messages of potentially some of the most important individuals in the world? If a 17yo could do it, I'm sure a nation state could do it.

Post by tedunangst » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

libraryatnight wrote: post #139

Taek wrote: post #131

Hitting a 17yo with 30 felony charges feels a bit steep to me. Also should any repercussions be considered against Twitter that a 17yo was able to gain access to the private messages of potentially some of the most important individuals in the world? If a 17yo could do it, I'm sure a nation state could do it.

I felt a sting reading that too. He hit the idiot computer kid jackpot and did idiot computer kid things with it. Not saying no consequences, but damn.

Post by brokencode » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

ibejoeb wrote: post #147

Taek wrote: post #131

Hitting a 17yo with 30 felony charges feels a bit steep to me. Also should any repercussions be considered against Twitter that a 17yo was able to gain access to the private messages of potentially some of the most important individuals in the world? If a 17yo could do it, I'm sure a nation state could do it.

Nothing in the complaint (well, for the two others, since his is sealed) says that a state-level actor wasn't involved. Could be the tip of the iceberg. I find it hard to believe that this was prank hacking for about $150,000. You could sell Obama's handle for more, surely.

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #195

ceejayoz wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can take individual responsibility and disable JS by default. Sure, you try explaining that to the general public, and why most of the sites they visit don't work anymore. It's hard enough to manage as a techie. This is the same argument snake oil purveyors use to complain about health and safety regulations, and it's silly for the same reasons. > This is much more ethical than the European choice to bring in p…

I don't know about the public. That is many people I don't have control of. I do know that I can do it myself and it works fine and I can work around things. I think this is true for many technical people. And I think doing this would encourage many of us to think of better ways to design and implement no-JS fallback functionality when making things for the public to use.