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Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

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

#361

Post by ChrisLomont »

stefap2 wrote: post #339
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.

A year or two and return the money. It's not like he tried to break into a nuclear plant. It is a messaging app, mostly nonsense.

... with the ability to move trillion dollar markets and potentially start riots or wars.

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

#362

Post by lima »

happytoexplain wrote: post #34
montenegrohugo wrote: post #27

If this turns out to be true, then we can conclude two things: 1. It's incredible that the security of Twitter allows for a solitary 17-year old to gain full access to (any) account. 2. This also explains why the profit of the hack was 'only' ~$100k. Many speculated about how incredibly valuable such a hack could be and how much more a group could have profited from this hack. Using it for two hours of bitcoin scammi…

Frankly, I don't take "a teenager did it" as an extra mark against hacked systems any more. It's the details that matter - the difference between one teenager and multiple adults being able to hack something is not large unless the context is government hacking.

Maybe in terms of raw skills, but adults are likely to have more experience, better judgement and better opsec.

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

#363

Post by ehsankia »

Taek wrote: post #337
ggggtez wrote: post #278

Imagine a 17 year old robs a bank and steal 100k from the savings accounts of random people. Or a 17 year old steals a couple of cars from random people off the street... The crime is not breaking into Twitter. The crime is theft. Twitter didn't steal that money, this guy did. Let's not pretend the internet is a magical land without consequences.

> Imagine a 17 year old robs a bank and steal 100k from the savings accounts of random people. I think that's a great comparison. But it's not an armed robbery, it's a break-and-enter where no property gets destroyed. How many felonies does the robber get after being caught? I don't actually know but I'm guessing 1-3? Certainly stealing $100k is a deserving felony. But 30 felonies seems a bit steep.

They technically also violated every single person they hacked, which includes the previous president of the united states, large company such as apple, and the upcoming presidential candidate.

Now imagine not only the 17yo stole 100k from the bank, but also entered the houses of people such as Obama and Biden, and potentially stole documents from their desks.

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

#364

Post by Nasrudith »

kodt wrote: post #273
gregschlom wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not the point that the parent comment is making, though. It's not whether it's bad for someone to commit this crime, it's whether Twitter should be held liable for such poor security practices that a 17 year old can hack them.

Is a 17 year old hacking them really proof of worse security than say a 30 year old?

Well the age implicitly assumes potential levels of education and sophistication. Few would be surprised to hear a 30 year old engineer designed a novel world class chip - they could easily have a PhD at that point to have the sophistication capable. For a 17 year old that would be pretty damn extraordinary. Now hacking is less than thar even to laymen who don't know how simple some holes are but 17 implies a lack of great sophistication.

The whole thing is an ageist rough proxy anyway - a developmentally disabled 30 year old hacking it would be more shameful than a 17 year old college graduate.

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

#366

Post by ehsankia »

paulpauper wrote: post #324
ggggtez wrote: post #278

Imagine a 17 year old robs a bank and steal 100k from the savings accounts of random people. Or a 17 year old steals a couple of cars from random people off the street... The crime is not breaking into Twitter. The crime is theft. Twitter didn't steal that money, this guy did. Let's not pretend the internet is a magical land without consequences.

technically he did not take the money but rather ppl gave it to him under a false pretense. It is close enough but one can imagine a jury being harder one someone who stole vs exploited his victim's greed and gullibility.

In the US, scams are still "conspiracy to commit money laundering", which is what the kid was charged with. Also wire fraud.

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

#367

Post by ACS_Solver »

par wrote: post #126

> Today’s announcement proves that cybercriminals can no longer hide behind perceived global anonymity Anyone know what the loose end was that got these guys busted?

I just read one of the complaints, against the 22 year old "Rolex". It's not so much loose ends as loose everything.

He didn't use a VPN or anything to mask his home IP, he discussed the hack on Discord, an unencrypted third-party platform, and reused a gmail address for the hack that he also used for a Coinbase account. Said Coinbase account being verified with his driver's license...

I shouldn't be too surprised, but I still am. I would have expected, at the very least, all discussion being handled on Signal or similar, all access to involved accounts to be exclusively via a regular VPN or Tor, and only using a brand-new fastmail email for anything to do with the hack. Those are the very basic precautions.

Curious aside: there's a bug in the complaint document. The affidavit is by a Special Agent with the US Secret Service, but the title page lists him as "Special Agent, FBI".

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

#368

Post by ehsankia »

koolba wrote: post #128
par wrote: post #126

> Today’s announcement proves that cybercriminals can no longer hide behind perceived global anonymity Anyone know what the loose end was that got these guys busted?

If they were dumb enough to waste such a high value target on a small scale bitcoin scam then I wouldn’t be surprised if they were dumb enough to perform the malicious actions from their home IP address.

Really seems like a modern day MafiaBoy.

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

#369

Post by nickff »

sneak wrote: post #355
ChrisLomont wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we make homeowners equally criminally liable when burglars break in? Certainly if the homeowner had been less lax or obtained more security, that burglary could have been prevented.

Breaking and entering requires breaking. Sending packets is peaceful speech.

Sending these particular packets was more akin to fraud. Should fraud be legalized?

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

#370

Post by aerovistae »

It's sad to me how the authorities are bragging about how quickly they caught them and how effective they are at solving this type of crime.

The truth is, the vast majority of these crimes go unpursued. They handled this quickly because it was so prominent, but if this happened to an everyday individual, the police wouldn't even bother.

I don't see this as much of a triumph. It never should have happened in the first place, and the consequences could have been utterly dire if it hadn't just been teenagers running a Bitcoin scam. This isn't a victory for nation-state security, it's an utter failure, and no policy changes have been made to prevent it happening again.

So what we have is a world in which our leadership is vulnerable to hackers, as are the rest of us, but only attacks against the rich and famous have actual consequences. It's the worst of all worlds.

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