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Anonymous allegedly hacked Romney tax records

nashvillecitypaper.com

101–110 of 116 posts

Re: Anonymous allegedly hacked Romney tax records

#101
post #72

"anonymous group" not THE "Anonymous"

Isn't the point of the name supposed to be that anyone can be THE Anonymous?

Yes, but AFAICT these people didn't claim to be "Anonymous"

"An anonymous individual or group..."

The original article says nothing about them claiming to be "Anonymous" as the HN title implies, only that they acted anonymously. Adjective, not noun.

Re: Anonymous allegedly hacked Romney tax records

#102
post #62

The ransom note has pretty specific language: "Romney's 1040 tax returns were taken from the PWC office 8/25/2012 by gaining access to the third floor via a gentleman working on the 3rd floor of the building. Once on the 3rd floor, the team moved down the stairs to the 2nd floor and setup shop in an empty office room. During the night, suite 260 was entered, and all available 1040 tax forms for Romney were copied." A…

One strategy would be to have stolen a bunch of returns from a dozen (well-known?) individuals and then have them confirm that privileged information was taken.

Wouldn't entirely prove it to the public because it could be some kind of clever conspiracy, but taking it to a large enough size would make it fairly plausible.

That's the only way I can think of to get around relying on PWC or the Romney campaign for confirmation.

Re: Anonymous allegedly hacked Romney tax records

#103
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point taken, but I'd be happy if candidates just released both sorts of information and weren't so afraid of being transparent.

Is it normal to release educational transcripts? I thought taxes were pretty much a given, but not so with college transcripts. Also the OPs assertion of paying 1 million dollars to hide Obama's transcripts is so ridiculous on its face I'm surprised people willingly post things like that online.

Fun fact, we have Romney's 2010 and 2011 tax returns. McCain only provided two years of returns too when he was running. It's not a hard-precedent to provide "everything you have", either tax records or birth certificates or transcripts or letters of recommendation... But looking at it from a politician's perspective: if it can only help you, fine, release it. Otherwise why bother? Unless the damage from not releasing exceeds the damage from releasing (which I think is becoming the case for Romney), it's just unnecessary information.

Re: Anonymous allegedly hacked Romney tax records

#104

Some of us developers have been working on the rehabilitation of the term "hack" and "hacker" (Hacker News anyone). The various Anonymous/LulzSec attacks of the last few years have been amusing and most have not been directly attacked individuals or been extortive (however, they've still been illegal, and I have not agreed with them). Although a politician, Mitt Romney is still a person. No one has rights to his pers…

"No one has rights to his personal information he has not decided to share. This attack is despicable." You realize Mitt Romney is campaigning for the office that is the single worst violator of that philosophy in the world, right? Don't get me wrong, I generally think law enforcement should have privileged access to private data, but you disrespect your philosophical position by pretending to apply it in a manner wh…

the office that is the single worst violator of that philosophy in the world, right?

The president of the United States takes an oath to defend the constitution. Sure, some do it better than others, but I can think of a dozen worse violators of getting personal information that people have decided not to share.

Re: Anonymous allegedly hacked Romney tax records

#105
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I got: imgur.com/5k37g

...I don't get it. I mean it's funny that someone is using the BTC chain for communications :) But does that image mean anything?

Maybe there's a message encoded in the image as some sort of double-steganography.

Re: Anonymous allegedly hacked Romney tax records

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually is ASCII data (byte == binary_btc_amount * 256), spelling the string ' http://i.imgur.com/5k6Rf.png . This PNG image is a QR code, which decodes to the string '01101000011101000111010001110000001110100010111100101111011010010010111001101001 01101101011001110111010101110010001011100110001101101111011011010010111101101001' (newline added for layout, not actually present). This, in turn, is a binary ASCII en…

And the second Bitcoin account contains the ASCII string 'prove it', in forward chronological order. The imgur string was in backward order.

In the case of the "allow release" bitcoin account, clearly someone is sending a message to the perpetuators saying "prove that you actually have the documents".

In the case of the "stop release", a different person likely sent a message as a joke, but didn't realize that the QR code couldn't handle the number of bits for the full imgur url, and it was truncated as a result to the "/i".

Re: Anonymous allegedly hacked Romney tax records

#107
PricewaterhouseCoopers PR managing director Chris Atkins says: “We are aware of the allegations that have been made regarding improper access to our systems. We are working closely with the United States Secret Service, and at this time there is no evidence that our systems have been compromised or that there was any unauthorized access to the data in question.”

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4481292

Re: Anonymous allegedly hacked Romney tax records

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the second Bitcoin account contains the ASCII string 'prove it', in forward chronological order. The imgur string was in backward order.

In the case of the "allow release" bitcoin account, clearly someone is sending a message to the perpetuators saying "prove that you actually have the documents". In the case of the "stop release", a different person likely sent a message as a joke, but didn't realize that the QR code couldn't handle the number of bits for the full imgur url, and it was truncated as a result to the "/i".

You're absolutely right about the truncation, the text is exactly 160 characters long, and the QR code generator used silently truncates the clipboard contents, so that it's very likely that the person was unaware that some characters were missing.

Any volunteers for sending a Bitcoin message to tell these guys that they messed up? :-)

Re: Anonymous allegedly hacked Romney tax records

#109
There is an important piece to this story that is missing from all the current news articles: a different earlier post on pastebin, dated 9/2, did not make mention of any kind of ransom:

http://pastebin.com/zdU1TK40

That earlier post simply said "The group will release all available files to the public on the 28 of September, 2012."

That says to me that a second group saw the original post and decided to try and make some money off it as a scam. Of course it's also possible that they just changed their minds over the weekend.

I'm not sure what either scenario says about the likelihood that this is real, but it definitely makes things more interesting. It's also worth noting that PWC is currently saying they have seen no signs that any data was taken.

Re: Anonymous allegedly hacked Romney tax records

#110
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the link?

This is what I got: imgur.com/5k37g

You have got the last characters wrong, see my messages below for the correct link. But there is no useful content in the imgur link because the person who made the image messed up and truncated their message.

As for the "promote release" Bitcoin account, somebody posted the ASCII string 'prove it' (I'm repeating what I said below since this thread shows up at the top).

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