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Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft

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Re: Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft

#121

Post by clarkm »

thom wrote: post #107
karlick88 wrote: post #11

While I am complete appalled by the data breach and hope that similar things never happens to anyone again I would like to propose a purely thought experiment: The hacker reported sold the nude photos of Jennifer lawrence for a mere sum of $130 using bitcoin. If we apply game theory here, these kind of data is very difficult to monetize. If you sell one copy of the data, it is then immediately distributed online for…

An almost Dawkins-esque level of tone-deafness.

Dawkins-esque, sure. But I wouldn't call it tone-deaf. You just have to realize that some people like talking about events at the meta-level instead of focusing solely on object-level details.

Re: Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft

#122

Post by zmmmmm »

stevenh wrote: post #24

Reddit should not be listed among the sites hosting the stolen images, as reddit does not support image uploads. Imgur is the primary site hosting the stolen images in that case.

You would have a point, but having just scanned the text, I couldn't find anywhere that it says the images are hosted on Reddit. It says they were "posted to Reddit" which is ambiguous at worst, very far from the allegation you are making.

Re: Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft

#123

Post by corford »

genwin wrote: post #60
harryh wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude. 1Password. Switching to using it for everything was one of the single smartest things I did this year. I agree with you about the wider industry problem, but for your own personal use just start using a password manager. Just do it.

Or a text file or spreadsheet containing passwords, in a TrueCrypt container (I still trust it).

Yep, I do the same. Master truecrypt container on a USB stick that just contains a text file with all my logons.

Then whenever I change that file I backup the truecypt container to Spideroak so I'm not hosed if I my stick gets lost/broken/stolen.

Re: Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft

#124

Post by cheald »

dreamfactory2 wrote: post #86
harryh wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude. 1Password. Switching to using it for everything was one of the single smartest things I did this year. I agree with you about the wider industry problem, but for your own personal use just start using a password manager. Just do it.

I got screwed by a password manager that got deleted during upgrading a hard drive. Never again

That's more or less why I use LastPass. Same concept, only decrypts client-side, but is automatically preserved across machines and hardware failure.

Re: Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft

#125

Post by yarou »

rayiner wrote: post #2

I wrote this in the other thread on the leak before it died: > Even if the leaks result from one at a time social engineering, it still really calls into question the practical security of the cloud. I doubt it's much harder to steal, e.g. confidential business documents from executives' cloud accounts than it is to steal pictures from celebrities' cloud accounts. > If I were a big organization with confidential info…

I think this points to the inherent weaknesses in the concept of "username/password". Why do we still have this paradigm? It worked in the 80s, but I think there needs to be a new paradigm in place today. Ideally you'd want a system like public key authentication, with some bio-marker used for identity management.

Re: Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft

#126

Post by kyrra »

vhost- wrote: post #115
kyrra wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this argument come up before and I don't understand it. Why do you trust KeePass more than 1Password? In both cases you are sharing the datafile however you'd like (Dropbox, thumbdrive, etc...). The primary difference is if you have access to the source code or not. If KeePass purposefully injected a vulnerability, it would just be that dev/project that would fail. If 1Password were to do the same, that com…

I was just offering it as a suggestion. Some people like to keep things on their own computers (or servers) and keepass offers that. I use Lastpass, which is hosted and I trust them with my passwords. I simply use keepassx to store two factor reset codes. I do this because if I store my reset codes in the same system as my passwords, then it's not very two-factor anymore, is it?

I completely understand. When people ask me which they should use, I outline the pros/cons of Keepass, LastPass, and 1Password. If you want password management for free, KeePass rocks. If you want to pay, it's definitely a tossup between LastPass and 1Password. I think they are all awesome tools.

Re: Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft

#127

Post by Accelerata »

MichaelDickens wrote: post #118
kyrra wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this argument come up before and I don't understand it. Why do you trust KeePass more than 1Password? In both cases you are sharing the datafile however you'd like (Dropbox, thumbdrive, etc...). The primary difference is if you have access to the source code or not. If KeePass purposefully injected a vulnerability, it would just be that dev/project that would fail. If 1Password were to do the same, that com…

My concern is that 1Password could shut down at any time and stop being supported, and I may lose access to all my passwords. KeePass is open source, so even if the current maintainer quits, it's likely that others in the community will step up to continue maintaining it. If absolutely necessary, I can edit the source code myself.

That's not how 1Password works. All passwords for 1Password are stored locally in an AES encrypted file. They never see, touch, or have any control over your passwords on their end. Even if they suddenly shut down tomorrow, all your passwords would still be accessible unless you chose to delete the application and have zero backups to restore from.

They even have an export function to dump the passwords (unencrypted) into a plain text or CSV file, so you can easily migrate the data to a new manager if needed.

Re: Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft

#128

Post by Serow225 »

hrabago wrote: post #111
eknkc wrote: post #21

I use strong passwords generated by 1Password for everything.. except for iCloud. There I have an idiot password. Why? Because freaking iPhone asks for that when I want to download something from App Store. How do you guys handle that?

You can use a different password for purchasing apps, and a different password (Apple ID) for your iCloud data. This goes for Game Center as well. You can use a different one for your mean, nasty, trash talking Gamer persona. Apple doesn't always make this clear, and I see a lot of people confused about this, but this is an option. Another login that can use a different Apple ID is Find My iDevice.

OK I must be dumb today, but I can't figure out how to do this and Google isn't helping me either - can you describe, or point me to a link, on how to set this up? Thanks!

Re: Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft

#129

Post by DanielBMarkham »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #112
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #87

So if I'm understanding this from a technical perspective, the real story is that this is/has been going on for quite some time, and there's an entire ecosystem devoted to it. The general public rarely ever sees behind the curtain, but somebody got greedy in this case and we ended up in a race to the bottom. If true, interesting that such a layered economic structure can exist without much press or public comment --…

Well the fact that JenLaw's photos went for the extremely huge amount of $130 suggests that either there's a lot more of it out there, or that the guy who stole them couldn't fence them (per [0] thread). Anyway, you summed up the take-away from the article perfectly. Since this seems to be going on for some time, I wonder how the whole ecosystem kept coordinating this well so far, that it's the first time we hear abo…

Yeah, there's some hard-to-accept math in that story.

If JenLaw's photos were worth $130 or so, that means that any photos that any of us have are associated with a market value. And it ain't that much.

Re: Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft

#130

Post by TeMPOraL »

api wrote: post #120
TeMPOraL wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wait for the misandristic crowd to show up, as they always do. I'm just starting to see first articles in my Facebook feed trying to spin this celebrity leak into women oppression problem.

Both groups certainly exist, but one is larger than the other by a few orders of magnitude.

(disclaimer: not meaning to start any kind of flame-war)

To be honest, the one I perceive (as a straight, white, middle-class, educated male) larger is the misandristic one. As a person who strives to be good and helpful to every human being equally, regardless of race, gender, orientation or whatever, I get everyday on the Internet and I get flooded by articles and comments saying that everything I do or think is misogynistic, wrong and overprivileged.

Honestly, I think that (and I never thought I'll say something like that ever) UrbanDictionary's definition of "social justice" sums it up perfectly:

Promoting tolerance, freedom, and equality for all people regardless of race, sex, orientation, national origin, handicap, etc... except for white, straight, cisgendered males. Fuck those guys, they're overprivileged no matter what. "In the name of social justice, check your privilege."

( http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=social+justic... )

I'm not saying the world is fair to women or minorities, it's sure as hell not. But SJWs are overplaying it by many orders of magnitude.

In my opinion, the reason this leak contains only women celebrities has nothing to do with misogyny, and everything to do with the reason why celebrity magazines are focused on women-celebrities, why most porn is targeting males, why most women dress in various cuts and colours while for a man just a suit will do, etc. Not saying it's good or bad, it's just how the culture evolved - but the point is, there's nothing new/important to see here.

Also, to risk being accused of victim blaiming, et al., when you become a celebrity - be it an actor, a model or a politician, you implicitly accept that all your life becomes a public matter and is subject to scrutiny by random actors. And to be honest, I think that those celebrities actually would agree with me on that. See, it's not the victims that are making a big scandal out of this leak, it's the media and the general public, who are doing it "in their defense".

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