Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

Post by rootsudo » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 8:34 PM UTC

brokencode wrote: post #207

ibejoeb wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you know anybody willing to pay over $150,000 for temporary access to Obama’s twitter account? I find this type of comment kind of naive and poorly thought out. Just because you’re a hacker doesn’t mean you know how to sell secrets to Russia, and trying to establish lines of communication like that are probably going to raise red flags with law enforcement. To be fair, the strategy of scamming for bitcoin was craz…

Post by hnuser123456 » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

justchilly wrote: post #249

dshep wrote: post #220

Trying to paint this 17-year old kid as a criminal mastermind strikes me as rather gross. I can see it as a kid doing it to see if he could, and using an obviously meme-worthy fake post that got out of hand. I think everyone has done some dumb things at this age without thinking about the consequences. If that is the case here, I hope this doesn't ruin the guys life.

Would that apply to criminals of all ages, based on their intelligence / mental maturity? Plenty of incarcerated 18+ adults with less brainpower than this guy were deemed responsible for their actions.

Post by paulcole » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

dshep wrote: post #220

Trying to paint this 17-year old kid as a criminal mastermind strikes me as rather gross. I can see it as a kid doing it to see if he could, and using an obviously meme-worthy fake post that got out of hand. I think everyone has done some dumb things at this age without thinking about the consequences. If that is the case here, I hope this doesn't ruin the guys life.

Post by alexander1100 » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

SahAssar wrote: post #246

shuntress wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is actually explicitly designed to enable recourse and refunds. Every single transaction is permanently and immutable tied to a verifiable identity. Through common practice, these identities are treated as disposable and therefor generally ignored. But stating that the currency is explicitly designed to disallow accountability is not an accurate representation of reality. -- Edit to add a practical example fo…

Transactions are not reversible by legal authority in bitcoin, only by the receiving party willingly doing the transaction in reverse. What you are talking about is establishing reputability, not about refund-ability or the ability of authorities to reverse illicit transactions. You can see that as a feature of bitcoin or not, but if you want protections from a system you need to act within that system.

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

newacct583 wrote: post #231

kolbe wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree this bothers me to my core. Even the 22 year old hasn't developed a fully functional neocortex. I know it seems a little hypocritical of me for getting sad when this happens to a young programmer and not an inner city gang member, but it does. To pull off a hack like this is indicative of these kids being intelligent, risky and bold. Yeah, they went where they shouldn't, but I personally think these are the t…

> To pull off a hack like this is indicative of these kids being intelligent, risky and bold. Yeah, they went where they shouldn't They engaged in straight up fraud! It's not like they just pranked some folks, they tried to fool the world into sending them money. It's true the fraud didn't work that well (or rather, not in relation to the severity of the Twitter hack), but they still stole some $100kUS or whatever. Y…