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70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

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Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#251

Post by cutitout »

RIMR wrote: post #146
stuckindider wrote: post #30

Where are the comments about how awful it is for people's private messages to be leaked? Or is this okay because the media told me these guys are the bad guys.

No. These guys ARE the bad guys. Not "because the media said so". They are objectively the bad guys. Parler's members are the rejects that couldn't survive on mainstream platforms due to their poor conduct. That userbase just planned and executed an attempt at insurrection against the US government. The market overwhelmingly has agreed that Parler violated ethical standards egregiously enough that severing business t…

> I fail to see the importance of these people's privacy in the wake of recent events. I also fail to have sympathy for people who trusted this hacked-together Twitter clone with their personal information.

Then I fail to have any sympathy and solidarity with you. You're just another violent extremist in my eyes, and the enemy of my enemy is not my friend by a long shot.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#252

Post by thinkharderdev »

raverbashing wrote: post #151
mabbo wrote: post #8

This story truly terrifies me: my team owns my company's sign up page. (I speak for myself and not them, of course). Sounds like Parler, fearing that their OTP provider might go down, decided to fail-open, ie: if the dependency throws an exception, presume there's something wrong with the dependency and that the code provided is acceptable. It never occurred to them that the dependency could be down permanently, or t…

The old age question with fail-closed is then not locking yourself out when things go wrong Everything has/should have a "break window" escape, and yes, that's a security weakness, but I don't see many alternatives to that.

When you own the platform and source code, then you always have a "break window" escape of updating the code. You can also have it fail open only when requests are coming from the internal network, or have a fail-safe authentication mechanism that allows authentication with a super-admin password that can be used "in case of emergencies."

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#253

Post by boringg »

Would not want to be a part of the Parler team before this, and certainly not after this week. I can only imagine they are dealing with an insane amount of fires, rapid growth/demand and it seems that they have a far from robust product. Compound all that with the political component and intense attention - it would be an unbearable grind.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#254

Post by makeworld »

sanedigital wrote: post #221
nkrisc wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not gonna lie: I find it very difficult to be upset by this when the site was a haven for people who want to mass executions for people like me. For me, the world is a little more complex than "privacy at all costs." It's hard to decide where to draw the line.

Talk about hyperbole. In no way did even 1% of the population on Parler want mass executions for people like you.

How do you know?

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#255

Post by nickysielicki »

maurys wrote: post #57

While I understand that Twilio is probably not at fault for the actual leak, I'm curious if they gave Parler some time to migrate/shift before cutting them off from their services. It's easy not to care since Parler is the "bad guy" here, but I do think that Internet infrastructure companies need to give a reasonable heads-up before pulling the rug under business customers.

This whole ordeal really sours Twilio in my mind.

Whereas AWS can plausibly claim that they don't want to host illegal content, what can Twilio say for themselves here? From Twilios perspective, providing Twilio's core product to Parler isn't any different than serving them to other platforms. They have no responsibility or liability. The lack of moderation on Parler is irrelevant when Twilio isn't involved with moving that data.

For a Saas platform to abruptly cut-up a contract, immediately breaking the authentication mechanism for the site on the other end of the contract, which directly results in a serious data breach for thousands of users (the majority of which have done nothing wrong), because your employees and leadership don't like their politics, doesn't sound like something that a publicly traded company should engage in.

edit: especially once it became obvious that AWS was going to bring the site down just a few hours later. They had a clear route to make their ideological stand and cause no damage by merely waiting 12 hours more.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#256

Post by curiousllama »

nrmitchi wrote: post #157
x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #74

I've always been amazed at how hackers can exfiltrate so much data with no one even batting an eye. Doing the math, the pure data cost to Parler was $7,700 (($0.15/GB 10) + ($0.11/GB 40) + ($0.09/GB 20)) 1000 => $7,700 https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-data-transfer-prices-re... Even the Chase Bank hack had an astronomical amount of data that didn't appear to set off any alarms.

According to reports, their monthly AWS spend (prior to today, obviously) was ~300k (or 3.6M/year). 7.7k is not really a noticeable increase, and any alarms that did trigger would likely have been attributed to increased user growth and platform load. That is if someone was even seeing a billing alarm alerting with every other issue that was going on.

I've seen more than one company that had a cloud spend policy that boiled down to: "if you spend a lot, the finance guy is gonna send you a snarky email a week later"

Totally not surprised they didn't catch a 7.7k spike in real time

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#257

Post by idrios »

user-the-name wrote: post #218
mabbo wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but you said it with what looked like a lot of sarcasm and criticism. I said it with a tone of "Oh shit, I could have done exactly the same thing". Empathy. But it's a fun point of the nuances of language, isn't it? Maybe I misunderstood you.

Maybe your takeaway there should be, "oh shit, I would have exactly the same thing, I need to rearrange my priorities so that I don't hurt people".

It sounds like that was his takeaway, except that for him it was coming from a place of empathy and not anger.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#258

Post by muspimerol »

sanedigital wrote: post #221
nkrisc wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not gonna lie: I find it very difficult to be upset by this when the site was a haven for people who want to mass executions for people like me. For me, the world is a little more complex than "privacy at all costs." It's hard to decide where to draw the line.

Talk about hyperbole. In no way did even 1% of the population on Parler want mass executions for people like you.

There's no hyperbole in the comment. It can still be a safe haven for extremists even if most of the users are not.

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#259

Post by [deleted] »

racl101 wrote: post #205
boredumb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just call everyone a terrorist and absolve your soul of any uneasiness you have with this. Surely this hyperbole hasn't been used in recent history to push authoritarian and unethical measures by state and private actors paving a golden road to hell.

Yeah, this precedent is very troubling to say the least. If or when things swing the other way, this will not go well for everybody.

[deleted]

Re: 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

#260

Post by ceilingcorner »

throwaway316943 wrote: post #249
ceilingcorner wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s actually a part of the plan. When the opposite party gains power in 4 years and does the same thing, you get to call them tyrants then, too. Clearly no one cares about being hypocritical anymore. All that matters is winning the media outrage battle of the moment.

Unfortunately it won’t be the same. The precedent will have been set and they’ll be able to ratchet it up to a new level. It’s going to be bad and I’m disgusted by how many people in here are cheering it on when it’s their side doing the kicking. Doxing, canceling, Twitter hate mobs, riot-protests, attacks on journalists, politically motivated violence. All becoming standard practice. Nobody cares as long as it’s the…

I am very, very concerned where it is heading. Trump is a temporary disaster that will be gone soon. Dangerous new precedents won’t be.
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