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Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

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

#521

Post by theelous3 »

hguant wrote: post #492
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.

I wonder what sort of machine those folks were plugging it into? If it's their general purpose work issued machine, shame on them, but I can't believe the FBI doesn't have a high and low side networks. How many plugged into the high side? How many plugged into the "this is my email and timecard" computer? I have a Chromebook running arch[0] that has a borked network adapter than I use to plug weird things into/use as…

Nice I run arch too. I like the way it is, and isn't.

As an aside to that important point, it seems like the solution here is to just remove all random device access points and drives before giving a system to some luddite with no security awareness.

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

#522

Post by theelous3 »

celdon25 wrote: post #474
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be surprised if the average FBI agent was less likely to plug in an unknown USB drive than the average Twitter engineer.

What makes you say that?

Software engineers are much more aware and focused on the problem of technical attacks. An fbi agent has no innate reason to distrust usb sticks. After all, they're just for "moving files" or whatever other basic tasks they use them for.

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

#523

Post by ksm1717 »

nickff wrote: post #385
slg wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you need processes in place to make sure a single person being careless cant do this much damage. There are low tech solutions that would greatly improve security[1], however the overhead this introduces is hard to justify in a world in which these breaches aren't that damaging to a company. We need to change incentives for companies by either mandating these security practices or implementing harmful repercussi…

I agree that better security practices are advisable, but you're victim-blaming. Twitter wasn't 'asking for it', and neither were the individuals who lost bitcoins; the 'hackers' intentionally perpetrated deceptions, misrepresentations, and fraud against both Twitter and the general public. If you compare what these three did to a white-collar crime, the dollar amount was small, but the behavior was egregious.

While the words do sound like victim blaming, id argue that sweeping conclusions that sound like the common rhetoric like “victims can do no wrong” deserve both careful consideration and some wiggle room. Not to mention that it’s a completely different situation than the usual instances where victim blaming is both toxic and common. The only egregious victim blaming that I can think of would be saying “those whose accounts were hacked were asking for it by being on twitter”. And I hope nobody is saying that.

I have a feeling that a vast majority would agree that choosing to send your money to a celebrity’s (apparent) bitcoin wallet for any reason will be tough to feel victim-sympathy for, and possibly asking to never see that money again given all of the well regulated systems and norms of money transfer that we have used for decades to centuries. But I understand that they were still taken advantage of and agree that they are victims.

Twitter is to blame here. The only thing they are a victim of is failing to protect their users (whom they have the obligation to protect) in a game where they have the ability to be solely the masters of their own security destiny.

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

#525

Post by [deleted] »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #426
Taek wrote: post #131

Hitting a 17yo with 30 felony charges feels a bit steep to me. Also should any repercussions be considered against Twitter that a 17yo was able to gain access to the private messages of potentially some of the most important individuals in the world? If a 17yo could do it, I'm sure a nation state could do it.

Overcharging has become the norm. Not just in high profile cases but in everyday ones as well. It's an effective leveraging tool used to get the accused to accept the actual charge in a plea bargain. Generally the American criminal justice system has bent all of its pressure upon convictions without trial. The system is designed to make your life a nightmare upon accusation in the hopes you cannot afford or dare to r…

[deleted]

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

#526

Post by vkou »

jessaustin wrote: post #423
vkou wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because the SEC isn't stupid, and would trawl through the data, until they found: * A set of freshly opened accounts. * That only shorted a single stock. * Right before a major hack. * That cashed out all at once. * That never traded again. And then they'd start calling the owners of those accounts, and asking questions. Most of those accounts would be legitimate traders, but that's fine - there's not that many…

It would be nice if SEC were this dogged in its pursuit of actual insider trading.

It is.

Insider trading is one of the few things it is really good at prosecuting - mostly because it's dead-easy to identify, easy to prove, often performed by idiots, and has a lot of incredibly-well established law surrounding it that makes turning piles of evidence into jail time easy.

None of these reasons hold for other financial crimes, which is why there are so few bankers and executives going to jail for everything that's not insider trading.

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

#527

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

ISL wrote: post #404
Veserv wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

One underestimates the capability of determined teenagers at one's peril.

And many of them live in what amounts to a serviced apartment above a restaurant.

Idle hands.

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

#528

Post by sashwatp »

nickff wrote: post #183
slg wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The age of the attacker is irrelevant to Twitter's role in this story. However your underlying point still stands. If we want these types of attacks to stop, we can't just let all these companies off with a public embarrassment being the primary punishment. At a certain point we have to start calling it negligence when companies fall for these attacks and fail to have proper precautions in place to prevent them.

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.

This reminds me of Mr.Robot. :)

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

#530

Post by totony »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #297
dshep wrote: post #220

Trying to paint this 17-year old kid as a criminal mastermind strikes me as rather gross. I can see it as a kid doing it to see if he could, and using an obviously meme-worthy fake post that got out of hand. I think everyone has done some dumb things at this age without thinking about the consequences. If that is the case here, I hope this doesn't ruin the guys life.

This kind of feels like "privilege" of the sort where you can kind of identify with this kid (he's a hacker, into computers) so you're excusing his actions. Yes, everyone has done some dumb things at this age, but the consequences of this were pretty severe, and he certainly knew what he was doing. Just calling this a "meme-worthy fake post" is minimizing what he did.

>but the consequences of this were pretty severe

Can you elaborate on this? The consequences were mild at best, with people easily duped being duped and twitter having a (understandably) worse reputation.

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