Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

wfla.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 702 posts

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

#601

Post by bryanrasmussen »

slg wrote: post #397
nickff wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that better security practices are advisable, but you're victim-blaming. Twitter wasn't 'asking for it', and neither were the individuals who lost bitcoins; the 'hackers' intentionally perpetrated deceptions, misrepresentations, and fraud against both Twitter and the general public. If you compare what these three did to a white-collar crime, the dollar amount was small, but the behavior was egregious.

The push against "victim blaming" is not about removing any possible role a victim would have in their victimhood. It is about destigmatizing victimhood and not blaming victims for things that are out of their control or that any other reasonable person would do. Let's imagine a situation in which someone breaks into my house and steals my TV. I deserve a decent amount of blame if I left my front door wide open befor…

No one deserves any blame for being burgled when leaving their front door opened - however if a bank leaves the vault open they deserve blame because what's in the vault is not just theirs. Twitter left the vault open.

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

#602

Post by mewpmewp2 »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #532
theelous3 wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point was "less likely", not that all engineers would not do that.

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

#603

Post by mewpmewp2 »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #539
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What about murdering 5 people vs 1 person?

Although I would agree in this case and the rationale would be that it probably would take not much more amount of time to adjust behaviour of someone who did 5 vehicles vs 1. But maybe something like 7 years instead.

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

#604

Post by [deleted] »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #594
tomc1985 wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting five police cars on fire is punk rock, not "domestic terrorism" Setting cars on fire is not an act of spreading terror. It is an act of defiance

Your Honor, I firebombed those police cars because I'm PUNK ROCK! do you see how you sound

[deleted]

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

#605

Post by tomc1985 »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #594
tomc1985 wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting five police cars on fire is punk rock, not "domestic terrorism" Setting cars on fire is not an act of spreading terror. It is an act of defiance

Your Honor, I firebombed those police cars because I'm PUNK ROCK! do you see how you sound

Again, you are misunderstanding the intention. 9/11 was an act of terrorism. Setting police cars on fire is vandalism, destruction of government property, maybe something for endangering police officers or something. All things condoned by your local friendly "anarchists".

What it isn't is terrorism.

Now go and listen to some Rage Against the Machine. Are they terrorists?

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

#606

Post by madaxe_again »

nickff wrote: post #385
slg wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you need processes in place to make sure a single person being careless cant do this much damage. There are low tech solutions that would greatly improve security[1], however the overhead this introduces is hard to justify in a world in which these breaches aren't that damaging to a company. We need to change incentives for companies by either mandating these security practices or implementing harmful repercussi…

I agree that better security practices are advisable, but you're victim-blaming. Twitter wasn't 'asking for it', and neither were the individuals who lost bitcoins; the 'hackers' intentionally perpetrated deceptions, misrepresentations, and fraud against both Twitter and the general public. If you compare what these three did to a white-collar crime, the dollar amount was small, but the behavior was egregious.

No, twitter is the perpetrator here, by having woefully inadequate systems. The kid is the victim, of his own hubris, and of twitter freely leaking customer information to anyone who asks for it.

I used to be CTO of an ecommerce platform - small fry, barely £1bn in annual transactions - but it was always absolutely clear in my mind that any breach would be my fault through negligence.

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

#607

Post by nathan_f77 »

I hope they will provide some more details about how they got caught. If this person can hack Twitter and they know about Bitcoin, then I'd be very surprised if they didn't take some basic steps to hide their tracks. E.g. Tor, VPN, cafe wifi, etc. I heard that some social engineering was involved, so maybe they called someone and their phone number was traced.

I would be interested to know if they forgot about one small detail. I think the FBI / NSA probably has full visibility into the Tor network and can easily deanonymise any users. Or it could be like the Harvard bomb hoax in 2013 [1]. (They used Tor, but they were also the only person using Tor at the time.)

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/18/5224130/fbi-agents-track...

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

#608

Post by BoorishBears »

29083011397778 wrote: post #570
DubiousPusher wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overcharging has become the norm. Not just in high profile cases but in everyday ones as well. It's an effective leveraging tool used to get the accused to accept the actual charge in a plea bargain. Generally the American criminal justice system has bent all of its pressure upon convictions without trial. The system is designed to make your life a nightmare upon accusation in the hopes you cannot afford or dare to r…

> Overcharging has become the norm With regard to "has become", this is completely false. Overcharging is not "new" in any way, shape, or form, as I hope the recent post commemorating Aaron Swartz's death would have reminded all of us.

What does this pointless nitpicking even supposed mean?

Modern legal frameworks have roots hundreds of years old, this habit is a recent development of the last few decades.

So why are you trying to browbeat this person over correctly referring to it as a recent trend, using a recent example to do so?

Reminder that every field is tech, churning through the framework of the week like it's going out of fashion...

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

#609

Post by tomp »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #601
slg wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The push against "victim blaming" is not about removing any possible role a victim would have in their victimhood. It is about destigmatizing victimhood and not blaming victims for things that are out of their control or that any other reasonable person would do. Let's imagine a situation in which someone breaks into my house and steals my TV. I deserve a decent amount of blame if I left my front door wide open befor…

No one deserves any blame for being burgled when leaving their front door opened - however if a bank leaves the vault open they deserve blame because what's in the vault is not just theirs. Twitter left the vault open.

They absolutely deserve the blame. At least if I was an insurance company, I’d definitely put that in my contract.

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

#610

Post by EE84M3i »

_jjkk wrote: post #161
nightcracker wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do all these prompts use doublespeak so blatantly? It's actually insane. "Your privacy matters to us." -> Then why are you asking me to give it up? If my privacy mattered to you you wouldn't even ask to install tracking cookies and gather my data.

It's not doublespeak. What would you have the message say? It's a legacy site and they haven't finished implementing out-out-only / data-deletion / etc... I wouldn't assume malicious intent.

>out-out-only

What is "out-out-only"? My google fu is failing me.

Post reply on HN