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Analysing the alleged Minneapolis police department “hack”

troyhunt.com

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Re: Analysing the alleged Minneapolis police department “hack”

#41

Post by qq11ww22ee33 »

chroem- wrote: post #24

Russia was caught running ads during the 2016 election that were sympathetic to radical white and black nationalist groups, with the end goal of sowing racial tensions. [0] I'm of the firm belief that we're being played by a hostile state actor here. I have no way of proving this, but I strongly suspect that Russia and/or China are trying to spur on the unrest through digital disinformation like in the OP. EDIT: by u…

Are the police deliberately attacking peaceful protests which causes the protestors to attack back? No, it's the Russians which are at fault.

Not to mention, how is this relevant at all to the linked post?

Re: Analysing the alleged Minneapolis police department “hack”

#42

Post by alexpetralia »

thebean11 wrote: post #30
chroem- wrote: post #24

Russia was caught running ads during the 2016 election that were sympathetic to radical white and black nationalist groups, with the end goal of sowing racial tensions. [0] I'm of the firm belief that we're being played by a hostile state actor here. I have no way of proving this, but I strongly suspect that Russia and/or China are trying to spur on the unrest through digital disinformation like in the OP. EDIT: by u…

Blaming outside instigators is a common tactic for downplaying unrest. I'm not saying you're wrong, and I agree Russia does run campaigns with the purpose of sowing tensions, but I'm very skeptical of any causality between Russia and the movement, protests, or riots.

#dcBlackout was trending on Twitter last night. How do you explain that? There were _tons_ of accounts I saw (many with Korean/Chinese avatars, which were probably fronts) that were spreading the same misinformation, often were a shrill tone of panic and conspiracy.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-dc-blackout-pro...

For the curious, this is called a Sybil attack.

Re: Analysing the alleged Minneapolis police department “hack”

#43

Post by nbardy »

chroem- wrote: post #24

Russia was caught running ads during the 2016 election that were sympathetic to radical white and black nationalist groups, with the end goal of sowing racial tensions. [0] I'm of the firm belief that we're being played by a hostile state actor here. I have no way of proving this, but I strongly suspect that Russia and/or China are trying to spur on the unrest through digital disinformation like in the OP. EDIT: by u…

China an Russia have been stirring up American discourse aggressively through the internet for years. They would most certainly seize on an opportunity like this. The incident is ultimately caused in the US, but it's for sure going to have its flamed stoked by foreign actors. They don't build there systems for one off attacks. They have weapons of war.

Re: Analysing the alleged Minneapolis police department “hack”

#44

Post by newen »

malandrew wrote: post #40
chroem- wrote: post #24

Russia was caught running ads during the 2016 election that were sympathetic to radical white and black nationalist groups, with the end goal of sowing racial tensions. [0] I'm of the firm belief that we're being played by a hostile state actor here. I have no way of proving this, but I strongly suspect that Russia and/or China are trying to spur on the unrest through digital disinformation like in the OP. EDIT: by u…

I don't think you even need a hostile state actor. Almost nobody I've discussed current affairs with that is supportive of the rioters is capable of understanding that the only correct way to compare racial/gender disparities in excessive use of police force is based on per 10,000 arrests per violent crime. You quickly discover that there really isn't much of a disparity and the disparity that exists doesn't even lea…

So you look at arrests of violent crime and decide that is the only way to asses racial/gender disparities in excessive use of police force?? Why is that a correct way? What about stops by police, arrests of non-violent crime, murders by police?

Re: Analysing the alleged Minneapolis police department “hack”

#45

Post by thebean11 »

alexpetralia wrote: post #42
thebean11 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blaming outside instigators is a common tactic for downplaying unrest. I'm not saying you're wrong, and I agree Russia does run campaigns with the purpose of sowing tensions, but I'm very skeptical of any causality between Russia and the movement, protests, or riots.

#dcBlackout was trending on Twitter last night. How do you explain that? There were _tons_ of accounts I saw (many with Korean/Chinese avatars, which were probably fronts) that were spreading the same misinformation, often were a shrill tone of panic and conspiracy. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-dc-blackout-pro... For the curious, this is called a Sybil attack.

Like I said, I'm not arguing that the foreign misinformation campaigns don't exist. I'm just skeptical that the protests and riots wouldn't be happening regardless.

Re: Analysing the alleged Minneapolis police department “hack”

#46

Post by aspenmayer »

mc32 wrote: post #35
boomboomsubban wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is by far the most likely hostile state actor. They are the ones that benefit from the protesters being seen as more radical and destructive than they are, while Russia or China would be working towards hypothetical future benefits.

Who in the US wins? Not the people. Not the pols. Maybe nebulous people with agendas... I mean it doesn’t help Trump. He’s kind taking a hands off approach so far. But it also doesn’t help Biden. He hasn’t said peep. He’s holed up and keeping quiet. It would help countries the US is nettling but I’m not sure China has much to gain (maybe tit for tat re Hong Kong) Russia? The whole story was they colluded with Trump..…

If nothing else, Russia would benefit from the transition period slightly, and may prefer shorter presidential terms to longer ones generally for this reason. However, since Biden has been VP before, he would be able to get up to speed quicker than some.

Re: Analysing the alleged Minneapolis police department “hack”

#47

Post by aspenmayer »

a-wu wrote: post #19
kart23 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the wikipedia page, its pretty accurate. There have been arrests for 'Anonymous' hacks but it's not really a group, more so an idea.

You're totally right and I shouldn't have referred to them as one entity. Even so, I think that Twitter accounts "representing" Anonymous spreading misinformation really discredits the work other Anonymous members do.

sabu[1] existed and was an actual person behind a keyboard at least some of the time. Hard to say where it starts and where it ends now, or then.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Monsegur

Re: Analysing the alleged Minneapolis police department “hack”

#48

Post by bargle0 »

lolc wrote: post #17
bargle0 wrote: post #16

What is the point of fabricating this attack?

I can't decide whether this was done for the lulz or to make the police look incompetent. Maybe both?

Or to create a fake threat against the police to justify further action, maybe? Or maybe a third party actor just doing it to create confusion and a lack of trust? I think a state actor would do a better job, though.

Re: Analysing the alleged Minneapolis police department “hack”

#49

Post by tialaramex »

> it's extremely unusual to see the same email address with multiple different passwords in a legitimate data breach as most systems simply won't let an address register more than once

I've actually built a system which did this years ago, over our initial protestations, and the reasoning went like this:

Our client (this was a white label product) has lots of elderly couples as customers, these are our end users and although they're on the Internet (makes sense, this is after all a web site you've white labelled so if you have customers without Internet that's a red flag right there) they only have one email address between them. So some end users want two accounts, but with one email address.

This made the login procedure a bit hairy and obviously there are scary corner cases for things like change password (Alice decides to use the same password as her husband Bob, now we can't tell their accounts apart!) but we felt that arguing with clients about why they should do Single Sign On (and thus eliminate the separate login for our white label product altogether) was more valuable than trying to change old people's minds about what constitutes a reasonable thing for two people to share.

Re: Analysing the alleged Minneapolis police department “hack”

#50

Post by monadic2 »

a-wu wrote: post #19
kart23 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the wikipedia page, its pretty accurate. There have been arrests for 'Anonymous' hacks but it's not really a group, more so an idea.

You're totally right and I shouldn't have referred to them as one entity. Even so, I think that Twitter accounts "representing" Anonymous spreading misinformation really discredits the work other Anonymous members do.

I don’t think the point of taking up the “anonymous” moniker is to get credit. That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the underlying meme, which is populist, not meritocratic or whatever. It’s spelled out quite well in V for Vendetta...
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