Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack • Hacker News Board

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

#461

Post by StandardFuture » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 11:57 PM UTC

jmount wrote: post #309

I don't have examples, but it seems to me you really hear a lot of teens pulling off successful social engineering attacks, even back to the days of phone-hacking. I guess that is evidence that some teens develop a fairly comprehensive understanding of social interaction.

A kid who spends this much time at a computer thinking about how to break into Twitter has a good grasp of social interactions?

Or, maybe Twitter just had some obvious loopholes that even a not super social-aware hacker could find and use?

I think it is better to assume that in these situations it is more incompetence from the platform than "super-genius" from the hacker that allows for things like this to happen (regardless of what Twitter needs to say for PR or the media needs to imply for clicks).

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

#462

Post by kgermino » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 11:57 PM UTC

> Although the case against the teen was also investigated by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office is prosecuting Clark because Florida law allows minors to be charged as adults in financial fraud cases such as this when appropriate. The FBI and the Department of Justice will continue to partner with the office throughout the prosecution.

Wow. It isn’t news, but what a terrible reflection of the US approach to criminal justice.

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

#463

Post by ChicagoDave » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 11:58 PM UTC

We really need to focus on rehabilitation instead of incarceration across the board.

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

#464

Post by supergirl » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 11:58 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #441

bilbopotter wrote: post #438

Obviously what they did is wrong but the kid is 17. To me this is a prime example of where a short sentence or community service should be used. Don't ruin his life - he could be a useful employee for a tech company.

American justice is rarely about rehabilitating the perpetrator. It’s about ensanguinating the bloodthirsty and making the fearful feel safe.

and making the plebs fearful

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

#465

Post by weare138 » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 11:59 PM UTC

meddlepal wrote: post #447

bilbopotter wrote: post #438

Obviously what they did is wrong but the kid is 17. To me this is a prime example of where a short sentence or community service should be used. Don't ruin his life - he could be a useful employee for a tech company.

And this is where the distinction between minor and adult breaks down. He's 17, he's going to be an adult within 365 days. I dunno what you do here. The book would absolutely be thrown at him if he were 18. He might get off "lightly" at 17, but should he? He should know better right? I think he gets tried as an adult. He just yeeted his life.

True he did commit a serious crime, but it's a non-violent crime. The kid obviously has some skill and potential in life. Sending young, misguided amateur criminals to prison just creates professional criminals. A crapton of strict probation and community service would be more appropriate than prison in my opinion.

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

#466

Post by svartkanin » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 11:59 PM UTC

So what will happen to the guy in the United Kingdom? Will he be extradited to the US?

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

#467

Post by dkersten » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 12:00 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #399

montenegrohugo wrote: post #27

If this turns out to be true, then we can conclude two things: 1. It's incredible that the security of Twitter allows for a solitary 17-year old to gain full access to (any) account. 2. This also explains why the profit of the hack was 'only' ~$100k. Many speculated about how incredibly valuable such a hack could be and how much more a group could have profited from this hack. Using it for two hours of bitcoin scammi…

People did say things like you could have made a fortune shorting stock by tweeting something insane from Elon Musks account. I don't buy that as necessarily better than a Bitcoin account. Stock transactions are heavily regulated and monitored. You'd leave a pretty large paper trail of any stock manipulation you hoped to profit from. Of course Bitcoin is highly traceable as well, so maybe the lesson is hacking into h…

The stock idea is dumb, in my opinion, because there were safer (no SEC) ways that required less capital and didn't require fancy trade accounts.

For example: buy up a load of super cheap shitcoins. Can be done for under $100. Then tweet from an exchange like Binance that they will shortly be listing said shitcoin. Watch the price go up, sell.

Or, with a bit more money, short one of the cryptocurrencies, tweet from a big exchange that they were hacked, profit on the panic selling.

The nice thing is, they could do one or even multiple of these and still do the scam.

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

#468

Post by hirundo » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 12:01 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #441

bilbopotter wrote: post #438

Obviously what they did is wrong but the kid is 17. To me this is a prime example of where a short sentence or community service should be used. Don't ruin his life - he could be a useful employee for a tech company.

American justice is rarely about rehabilitating the perpetrator. It’s about ensanguinating the bloodthirsty and making the fearful feel safe.

> It’s about ensanguinating the bloodthirsty

So, like Twitter.

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

#469

Post by pcmoney » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 12:01 AM UTC

Veserv wrote: post #349

nickff wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From memory, I recall the FBI did a study, and found that half of their employees would plug in a USB drive that they found on the ground in the parking lot. After training, that number was reduced to a quarter. If a security-focused government police agency is so vulnerable, it is unreasonable to expect perfection from a (less paranoid) company.

Except this is not expecting perfection, it is expecting a level of security that can prevent children, literal children, from walking right through it. Which would not even be a problem except for the fact that this is far, far less than what Twitter has led their average user and stockholder to believe. To illustrate my point, if Twitter told the truth in big bold print at the top of every page so every user knows:…

I mean determined teenagers created FB so...

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

#470

Post by dang » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 12:02 AM UTC

(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24012968, but we merged the threads)

Also: don't miss that this thread has multiple pages of comments. That's what the "More" link at the bottom of the page points to. Or you can click here for page 2:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24011939&p=2