481–490 of 702 posts
What's the big deal, he stole some bit coin and embarrassed Jack. Wall Street Insiders steal billions everyday from Joe6pack with the Governments help and they get to laugh about over a drink after work. Now we can spend millions in tax payer money incarcerating him.... He should get a reward for exposing how shitty Twatter is. Besides the NSA is reading every txt you send and listening to every call you make. They k…
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.
Note that this does not apply to violations of State laws, only Federal law violations. States may further restrict the publication of juvenile records.
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.
https://firstamendmentcoalition.org/2009/06/can-i-publish-th...
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.
Personally, I find "it was a prank" extremely easy to believe. It's the simplest answer to the question "Wait, if someone compromised Twitter so badly they could tweet anything from any account, why didn't they try to move the whole stock market or start World War III?" "Because they're young punks and didn't think of that" is a reasonable answer.
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 have bad news, there are no important individuals. Sorry.
I have an unrealistic idea (more of a thought experiment) that companies should face equal culpability to criminal hackers in attacks. After all, technically the way the hackers use systems /is/ authorized in a sense, even if the method of obtaining authorization is unconventional. Maybe this would get companies to pay more attention to securing their systems. From a certain perspective, Twitter is an accomplice to f…
> companies should face equal culpability to criminal hackers in attacks. That's an interesting idea, and I think I agree with you in spirit. But don't most hacking-related criminal charges boil down to "unauthorized access to a computer"? It would be hard to argue that the company that owns the computers has unauthorized access. Maybe a better phraseology would be to say that the company is an accomplice to the hack…
That's not the way I'd argue. I'd say the company has authorized access and they then gave access to fraudsters who should not have been given access to the system, which is where they were aiding the fraud.
So they aren't the principal offender, but they did aid in the offence which is what I'm suggesting makes them an accomplice (although as another paulpauper points out, an accomplice has to be aware they're aiding a crime - being duped isn't a crime).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the point of having different sentencing for minors if you can just try them as an adult if they're "bad enough"?
I always thought that was exactly the point, an acknowledgment that children and teenagers sometimes do stupid things, but there’s a big difference between doing some graffiti vs raping and murdering someone when you’re 15.
Hacking into Twitter accounts isn't a depraved, violent crime. I could see that as the immaturity or lack of foresight of a smart teenager. Yes, they're prominent people. Doesn't really change it IMO.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…