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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

#531

Post by devin »

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.

1. When was this study conducted? I remember a story like this from somewhere around 2008. A lot has changed since then. In fact, I recall that during my onboarding at a medium size tech company, it was an explicit part of the company's security training curriculum.

2. I think you may actually have it backwards. I would imagine the engineering group at Twitter (the people who have important credentials) is in some ways more paranoid, or at least more technically savvy and therefore more aware than many of the people at the FBI.

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

#532

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

theelous3 wrote: post #522
celdon25 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you say that?

Software engineers are much more aware and focused on the problem of technical attacks. An fbi agent has no innate reason to distrust usb sticks. After all, they're just for "moving files" or whatever other basic tasks they use them for.

> Software engineers are much more aware and focused on the problem of technical attacks.

We’re constantly presented with evidence to the contrary.

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

#533

Post by nexuist »

nkrisc wrote: post #502
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.

Like most things in life: it depends. Your home was broken into and your jewelry stolen? No, you're not criminally liable for anything, you were the only victim. Your home was broken into and they stole the stack of personal records for your small business' employees that you left sitting on the dining room table? Yes, you should be liable for that because you were not the only victim and those others were victimized…

> Your home was broken into and they stole the stack of personal records for your small business' employees that you left sitting on the dining room table? Yes, you should be liable for that because you were not the only victim and those others were victimized due to your own negligence. The documents were not properly secured, was your home properly secured as well given the sensitive material you were housing there?

This is one of those ideas that seems to be made in good faith but ultimately harms the competition far more than it harms the industry leaders. Twitter can afford cameras and alarm systems for its data centers; I can’t. Twitter can afford to hire armed guards; I can’t.

The ultimate end result of a policy like this is that people will simply kill anyone trespassing on their property; after all, who knows what documents they may have seen or confidential records they may have exfiltrated. It’s way too heavy handed.

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

#534

Post by gus_massa »

shadowgovt wrote: post #221
trimbo wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the United States, we generally consider minors who commit crimes to be a different class of criminal than people above 18. We do this because (AFAICT), there's a sort of societal agreement that wisdom/maturity is a logarithmic curve that begins to flatten in the late teens and 18 was picked as a legal threshold. So if a 2 year old, 8 year old and 18 year old all shoot and kill someone, we prescribe much different…

FWIW, don't imagine that there was anything as elegant as "logarithmic curve analysis" used to decide that the age of majority is 18. It's an age that was settled upon by common-sense consensus over a grand function of "Well, most Americans (descended from Europeans) thought it should be around 21," and that's probably because 21 is a nice, round number. Then the draft age got pushed to 18 because we needed more bodi…

But they still can not drink alcohol...

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

#535

Post by ehsankia »

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…

Wasn't there one more person involve (Kirk#5270) who apparently did most of the work and let these kids do the work? Sounds like a MafiaBoy situation, where more experienced hackers did the work and let younger script kiddies take the fall for it.

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

#536

Post by nick0garvey »

threatofrain wrote: post #179
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.

> 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? Is the suggestion that if your security is weak, at least some of the blame goes to the hacked? If your home security is weak, should we grant more leniency to a burglar? The insurance company should be the one to punish the riski…

It isn't fair to compare to home security. If someone breaks into my home, only my belongings are lost.

If someone breaks into Twitter, user data is compromised. It's not just the business that pays a price.

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

#537

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

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.

> Hitting a 17yo with 30 felony charges feels a bit steep to me.

Hitting them with 30 felony charges is perfectly reasonable/correct. Those are what the charges are for the crimes.

But the punishment for those 30 felonies should/will be adjusted down. I think at most this person will lose 5 years of their life.

Not like the 25 year old girl in Seattle that set a bunch of Seattle Police cars on fire during the protests. She's going to do 4 years for each carbombing. 4 * 5 = 20 years. 25 year old girl... and now here life is basically over. And for what?

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

#538

Post by Talanes »

user5994461 wrote: post #236
bcohen5055 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a home but if you were a bank and a 17 year old walked into the bank, talked to someone and was able to walk out with a fat stack of cash i think the insurance company would have to reconsider your policy.

Absolutely any 17 year old can walk into a bank/shop and get out with cash. Preferably armed and not alone. The challenge is to get out and never be caught.

According to a family friend who used to work bank robberies for the FBI, it's very easy to get away with one bank robbery. It's the compounding evidence when you commit more that gets you. Of course, that was a couple decades ago. I'm sure better surveillance technology has shifted that balance some.

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

#539

Post by reitzensteinm »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #537
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.

> Hitting a 17yo with 30 felony charges feels a bit steep to me. Hitting them with 30 felony charges is perfectly reasonable/correct. Those are what the charges are for the crimes. But the punishment for those 30 felonies should/will be adjusted down. I think at most this person will lose 5 years of their life. Not like the 25 year old girl in Seattle that set a bunch of Seattle Police cars on fire during the protest…

The sentences should run concurrently.

4 years for setting a car on fire is not unreasonable, although maybe a little harsh depending on priors. It's a dangerous thing to do.

But setting five cars on fire is not particularly worse than setting one car on fire.

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

#540

Post by weaksauce »

cryptoz wrote: post #456
weaksauce wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he socially engineered his way into twitter... that's not exactly what those units are looking for.

Didn't the FBI hire Frank Abagnale Jr for like 30 years specifically for those exact skills?

More for his check fraud stuff I thought.
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