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The PewDiePie Hackers: Could hacking printers ruin your life? [video]

50 points by petercooper 8y ago

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dangero 8y ago
I doubt anyone is after them because even 50K pages of paper /ink is not much financial damage and I'm sure very few whose printer joined the party bothered reporting it. Am I missing something?
- bch 8y ago
  Even if the costs were minimal, the more attention they get the better example they’ll set if caught. You wouldn’t steal a car.[0] [0] https://youtu.be/HmZm8vNHBSU https://youtu.be/HmZm8vNHBSU
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - isostatic 8y ago
    You wouldn't steal a baby. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg
- Buge 8y ago
  Weev found that certain urls had private AT&T user information on them, and scraped them to get 114k users' information. Then he notified a journalist and sent the information to the journalist as proof. He was found to have done $73k damages. Why? AT&T sent a physical letter to all 114k people, and that was the cost of the postage. Convicted to 41 months in prison. https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/22/weev-files-appeal-gets-new-lawyer/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/22/weev-files-appeal-gets-new...
  - beezischillin 8y ago
    Wow! This is disgusting. In a sane reality AT&T would've been the one paying damages...
  - hooloovoo_zoo 8y ago
    However, he did win on appeal and did not serve most of the conviction. https://www.eff.org/press/releases/appeals-court-overturns-andrew-weev-auernheimer-conviction https://www.eff.org/press/releases/appeals-court-overturns-a...
    - Buge 8y ago
      Yes, but the overturn wasn't based on urls, or scraping, or disclosure, or security, or damages, it was based on him being charged in the wrong state. The court system still thinks everything else about the case was fine.
  - CaptainZapp 8y ago
    Let's not forget that this gentleman is a neo nazi and white supremacist of the vilest sort.[1] I may be downvoted to hell and then some, but it's impossible to look beyond those facts before mythologizing him into some sort of hacker hero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#After_prison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#After_prison
    - shakna 8y ago
      One can both dislike a person and believe their actions were above board. He doesn't have to be hero worshipped - his actions in this particular case should stand on their own. His terrible beliefs may only come into it if they are relevant to what actions he performed. Serving prison time for notifying people of a serious privacy breach doesn't seem to be a balanced approach.
- jaabe 8y ago
  Europol just shut down a site where you could buy DDOS attacks and as a result 150.000 people who had done so were targeted by police[1]. DDOSing has been a scourge. I work in the public sector of Denmark and we see then from time to time, and, you frankly feel rather helpless. I mean, these days we have ways of dealing with them technically, but I don’t think anyone ever expected the culprits to face any sort of consequences. Yet here we are. https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/dansk-politi-med-i-kaempe-politiaktion-150000-personer-bestilte-fire-millioner https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/dansk-politi-med-i-kaempe-...
  - rebuilder 8y ago
    150 000 people bought DDOS services? That boggles the mind.
    - r1ch 8y ago
      These services are / were very popular in online gaming to knock opponents offline, you only need a few minutes of DDoS time to kill a residential connection. Console games in particular are quite vulnerable as a good amount of them still use peer to peer connections so you can easily find IPs to target. Other techniques such as booby trapped links, P2P voice chat, fake servers etc can find player IPs for PC games.
  - alasdair_ 8y ago
    The site had 151K registered usernames. This doesn't at all mean that there 151,000 actual people involved - it just sounds better that way in the press release. More information here: https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/authorities-across-world-going-after-users-of-biggest-ddos-for-hire-website https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/authorities-acro...
Zafira 8y ago
There is always going to be a portion of the population that are just users of technology, without any understanding of how it works. Consequently, there are going to be people who are going to feel violated, confused and angered by stunts like this. I don't think there was any malicious intent by the Hacker Giraffe, but I doubt they thought this through. One was bound to encounter a fair amount of systems owned by not-so-tech-literate persons who would react in the worst way possible to stunts like the ones they did. I think some of the real questions that events like this raise are: * How do reduce the technological illiteracy in the population? * How do we develop polices to ensure that these devices that are being sold to millions of people are properly protected?
- watwut 8y ago
  Technological illiteracy is red herring. The actual issues are lack of security on the devices and lack of boundaries on side of some tech and tech-adjacent subcultures. The third issue are disproportionate penalties, they are really too big now. People are angry about analogical non-tech "pranks" when those happen too. It is convenient to chulk anger of prank target to his own faults, but no, they are not as cool as you think you are and people in general don't like pranks. And I am blaming culture instead of teenagers, because you have adults like PewDiePie saying this "I love it. Please keep it up, just don’t do anything illegal, because that will look bad on me—that’s the only reason—that will look bad on PewDiePie". What exactly does teenager hears there and would the teenager in that culture hear the opposite clear "it is illegal" and "don't do it, boundaries of others" messages?
  - who-knows95 8y ago
    i agree tech illiteracy is the red herring, the fact this vulnerability affected so many people, points to the issue being with the manufacturer, designing and coding this, without consideration to the security. i think the "attack" they did is pretty perfectly grey hat, expose a weakness to the user with a "how-to-fix" guide. (i should note, i'm talking about the chrome hack.)
    - 8y ago
bemmu 8y ago
This has a mockumentary vibe to it. BBC making a seriously produced video out of this joke, with the hackers in masks with voices changed, kept me questioning if the producers were being serious or not. Felt like an episode of Nathan for You.
- mikeywazowski 8y ago
  I wasn't going to watch this video until I read your comment. The producers were quite successful in temporarily filling the Nathan for You shaped hole in my life. However, I must agree that I'm unsure whether that was their aim or not..
- Dirlewanger 8y ago
  On one hand, I want to believe they're just being British and are in on the joke. But given this is "old" media, I also think they still don't understand the power that some YouTube creators wield, how pervasive their influence is, and that they are deftly scared of what they don't understand (we've already seen this with WSJ's/Polygon's continual efforts to smear and distort Felix's public image).
kazinator 8y ago
If you really want to piss of authorities with printer hacking, remove the watermarking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
_aravindc 8y ago
Subscribe to PewDiePie !
- abledon 8y ago
  I may just might if Elon musk actually goes on after his tweet. If anything that’s definitely strong marketing game to gen -X-ers
  - lihaciudaniel 8y ago
    I don't think that may be the case, in his video he posts too many "far right" red pills, even Paul Graham got criticised on Twitter for defending Kjelberg.
    - broodbucket 8y ago
      This simply isn't true, and just because someone gets criticised it doesn't mean that criticism is valid.

50 points by petercooper 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

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deleted 8y ago

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deleted 8y ago

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deleted 8y ago

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dangero 8y ago

I doubt anyone is after them because even 50K pages of paper /ink is not much financial damage and I'm sure very few whose printer joined the party bothered reporting it. Am I missing something?

bch 8y ago
Even if the costs were minimal, the more attention they get the better example they’ll set if caught. You wouldn’t steal a car.[0] [0] https://youtu.be/HmZm8vNHBSU https://youtu.be/HmZm8vNHBSU
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- isostatic 8y ago
  You wouldn't steal a baby. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg
Buge 8y ago
Weev found that certain urls had private AT&T user information on them, and scraped them to get 114k users' information. Then he notified a journalist and sent the information to the journalist as proof. He was found to have done $73k damages. Why? AT&T sent a physical letter to all 114k people, and that was the cost of the postage. Convicted to 41 months in prison. https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/22/weev-files-appeal-gets-new-lawyer/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/22/weev-files-appeal-gets-new...
- beezischillin 8y ago
  Wow! This is disgusting. In a sane reality AT&T would've been the one paying damages...
- hooloovoo_zoo 8y ago
  However, he did win on appeal and did not serve most of the conviction. https://www.eff.org/press/releases/appeals-court-overturns-andrew-weev-auernheimer-conviction https://www.eff.org/press/releases/appeals-court-overturns-a...
  - Buge 8y ago
    Yes, but the overturn wasn't based on urls, or scraping, or disclosure, or security, or damages, it was based on him being charged in the wrong state. The court system still thinks everything else about the case was fine.
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  Let's not forget that this gentleman is a neo nazi and white supremacist of the vilest sort.[1] I may be downvoted to hell and then some, but it's impossible to look beyond those facts before mythologizing him into some sort of hacker hero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#After_prison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#After_prison
  - shakna 8y ago
    One can both dislike a person and believe their actions were above board. He doesn't have to be hero worshipped - his actions in this particular case should stand on their own. His terrible beliefs may only come into it if they are relevant to what actions he performed. Serving prison time for notifying people of a serious privacy breach doesn't seem to be a balanced approach.
jaabe 8y ago
Europol just shut down a site where you could buy DDOS attacks and as a result 150.000 people who had done so were targeted by police[1]. DDOSing has been a scourge. I work in the public sector of Denmark and we see then from time to time, and, you frankly feel rather helpless. I mean, these days we have ways of dealing with them technically, but I don’t think anyone ever expected the culprits to face any sort of consequences. Yet here we are. https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/dansk-politi-med-i-kaempe-politiaktion-150000-personer-bestilte-fire-millioner https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/dansk-politi-med-i-kaempe-...
- rebuilder 8y ago
  150 000 people bought DDOS services? That boggles the mind.
  - r1ch 8y ago
    These services are / were very popular in online gaming to knock opponents offline, you only need a few minutes of DDoS time to kill a residential connection. Console games in particular are quite vulnerable as a good amount of them still use peer to peer connections so you can easily find IPs to target. Other techniques such as booby trapped links, P2P voice chat, fake servers etc can find player IPs for PC games.
- alasdair_ 8y ago
  The site had 151K registered usernames. This doesn't at all mean that there 151,000 actual people involved - it just sounds better that way in the press release. More information here: https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/authorities-across-world-going-after-users-of-biggest-ddos-for-hire-website https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/authorities-acro...

Zafira 8y ago

There is always going to be a portion of the population that are just users of technology, without any understanding of how it works. Consequently, there are going to be people who are going to feel violated, confused and angered by stunts like this. I don't think there was any malicious intent by the Hacker Giraffe, but I doubt they thought this through. One was bound to encounter a fair amount of systems owned by not-so-tech-literate persons who would react in the worst way possible to stunts like the ones they did. I think some of the real questions that events like this raise are: * How do reduce the technological illiteracy in the population? * How do we develop polices to ensure that these devices that are being sold to millions of people are properly protected?

watwut 8y ago
Technological illiteracy is red herring. The actual issues are lack of security on the devices and lack of boundaries on side of some tech and tech-adjacent subcultures. The third issue are disproportionate penalties, they are really too big now. People are angry about analogical non-tech "pranks" when those happen too. It is convenient to chulk anger of prank target to his own faults, but no, they are not as cool as you think you are and people in general don't like pranks. And I am blaming culture instead of teenagers, because you have adults like PewDiePie saying this "I love it. Please keep it up, just don’t do anything illegal, because that will look bad on me—that’s the only reason—that will look bad on PewDiePie". What exactly does teenager hears there and would the teenager in that culture hear the opposite clear "it is illegal" and "don't do it, boundaries of others" messages?
- who-knows95 8y ago
  i agree tech illiteracy is the red herring, the fact this vulnerability affected so many people, points to the issue being with the manufacturer, designing and coding this, without consideration to the security. i think the "attack" they did is pretty perfectly grey hat, expose a weakness to the user with a "how-to-fix" guide. (i should note, i'm talking about the chrome hack.)
  - 8y ago

bemmu 8y ago

This has a mockumentary vibe to it. BBC making a seriously produced video out of this joke, with the hackers in masks with voices changed, kept me questioning if the producers were being serious or not. Felt like an episode of Nathan for You.

mikeywazowski 8y ago
I wasn't going to watch this video until I read your comment. The producers were quite successful in temporarily filling the Nathan for You shaped hole in my life. However, I must agree that I'm unsure whether that was their aim or not..
Dirlewanger 8y ago
On one hand, I want to believe they're just being British and are in on the joke. But given this is "old" media, I also think they still don't understand the power that some YouTube creators wield, how pervasive their influence is, and that they are deftly scared of what they don't understand (we've already seen this with WSJ's/Polygon's continual efforts to smear and distort Felix's public image).

kazinator 8y ago

If you really want to piss of authorities with printer hacking, remove the watermarking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code

_aravindc 8y ago

Subscribe to PewDiePie !

abledon 8y ago
I may just might if Elon musk actually goes on after his tweet. If anything that’s definitely strong marketing game to gen -X-ers
- lihaciudaniel 8y ago
  I don't think that may be the case, in his video he posts too many "far right" red pills, even Paul Graham got criticised on Twitter for defending Kjelberg.
  - broodbucket 8y ago
    This simply isn't true, and just because someone gets criticised it doesn't mean that criticism is valid.