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If they had full access to Twitter’s backend, they probably would be tweeting from accounts like @POTUS or @jack. But this seems like they have access to limite
by byteshock 6y ago
If they had full access to Twitter’s backend, they probably would be tweeting from accounts like @POTUS or @jack. But this seems like they have access to limited accounts. Most likely gained access to a third party service that allows you to manage your tweets?
Edit: they tweeted from the twitter support account. Just wow. They might have actually gotten into Twitter’s systems.
Edit 2: To expand on my edit above, I saw multiple tweets from other accounts that showed a screenshot of the scam tweet originating from the twitter support account. I’m not sure if it’s real or not, since they keep deleting the tweets. If it is real that would definitely open doors to more theories.
Edit 3: Seems like the twitter support account was a joke. Impossible to tell with everything going on!
- jmkni 6y agoDonald Trump was Tweeting in Farsi earlier, I was seriously on the fence about whether that was a genuine tweet.
- eternalban 6y ago"3 people have been sentenced to death for participating in demonstrations. They could be subject to execution at any moment. This sends a deplorable message to the world and should not occur. #dont_execute" [edit: not sure why this is getting so much silent attention. It is a literal translation of the tweet referenced in OP.]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- benlumen 6y agoYou say they'd target POTUS but of the very high profile accounts it's so far billionaires, corporations and democrat politicians. Does make you wonder.
- Thorentis 6y agoI'm constantly amazed that people who are critical of billionaires and corporations, never wonder why billionaires and corporations are usually democrat supporters.
- talaketu 6y agoThat's an amazing stack of assertions you have there.
- boringg 6y agoFull stack
- icedistilled 6y agoI'm pretty sure most billionaires support the GOP. I don't have a citation. But neither did you. Let's not turn HN into a hodgepodge of wild unbacked claims. That's what reddit is for.
- Thorentis 6y agoGates, Bezos, Zucckerburg, etc. etc. I was talking mostly about tech billionaires, should've made that clearer.
- redisman 6y agoLiberal billionaires are liberal. How deep
- ballarak 6y agoBezos is a conservative. Amazon as a company is also conservative-leaning. If you look at Amazon's PAC, most of their donations go to the GOP.
- icedistilled 6y agoWell that's wrong too. I'm not sure the FB counts as democratic. At best he's big shades of gray with contradicting indications. Out of the top four richest tech billionaires, according to forbes, only one of them is not most likely conservative and that one tries to stay out of politics, i.e. bill gates. The next two have clear conservative leanings or contradicting indications, i.e. Bezos and Zuck. Number four is Larry Ellison, who recently hosted a trump fundraiser. Well here is what wikipedia has on him: Politics Ellison was critical of NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, saying that "Snowden had yet to identify a single person who had been 'wrongly injured' by the NSA's data collection".[85] He has donated to both Democratic and Republican politicians,[86] and in late 2014 hosted Republican Senator Rand Paul at a fundraiser at his home.[87][88] Ellison was one of the top donors to Conservative Solutions PAC, a super PAC supporting Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential bid. As of February 2016, Ellison had given $4 million overall to the PAC.[89] In 2020, Ellison hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump at his Rancho Mirage estate.[90][91]
- metrokoi 6y agoThe POTUS account likely has more additional security than normal accounts.
- zucker42 6y agoLike what?
- drak0n1c 6y agoThe account was vandalized in the past by a rogue employee, they probably added more controls since then.
- smsm42 6y agoMaybe not everybody with internal tools can mess with it. Because somebody with internal tools already messed with it before and it didn't look very well for twitter. So if there's anybody with brains there they probably made some measures so it won't happen again.
- GhostVII 6y agoNot sure why you are being downvoted given that this is probably correct? Sounds like the attack was through an admin portal. Given that Trump was one of the few high profile accounts not targeted, it seems like the attackers were not able to access his account through that portal. And his Twitter has been attacked by employees before so Twitter probably locked it down so employees can't modify it.
- Akronymus 6y agoCould you elaborate on twitter employees attacking his account? This is the first time I read about that.
- coolspot 6y agohttps://duckduckgo.com/?q=twitter+employee+trump+account&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=twitter+employee+trump+account&ia=... https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/30/former-twitter-employee-who-deleted-trumps-account-it-was-a-mistake.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/30/former-twitter-employee-who-...
- bollu 6y agoCan you clarify your edit? All I see is this tweet (https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1283518038445223936 https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/128351803844522393...) which reads We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly. Are you implying that this was tweeted by the attackers? or something else?
- byteshock 6y agoI edited my comment, but basically I saw tweets that showed a screenshot of the scam tweet from the twitter support account. Not sure if it’s real since they delete the scam tweets.
- Pmop 6y agoI think that they just like to be alive, so they avoided hacking POTUS or other countries Presidents/PMs.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tathougies 6y agoIf they target @POTUS, I believe they'd be guilty of impersonating an elected official, which would make this an even more serious crime? I dunno
- techntoke 6y agoThey hack thousands of accounts and make national news, I doubt they are that worried. They probably just don't have access or they would have.
- Krasnol 6y agoMaybe they're POTUS fans ;)
- mlinsey 6y agoI do think it's odd that so many prominent accounts were hit but not Trump's. I remember there was an incident a couple years ago that a trust and safety employee at Twitter suspended Trump's account on their last day. It's very likely that after that incident, special guards were set in place to prevent admin tools from messing with Trump's account. This would align with speculation that this hack targeted an internal employee admin tool.
- VectorLock 6y agoThe Twitter backend is probably heavily sprinkled with statements like `account_handle match { case "therealdonaldtrump" => throw new TrumpNotAllowedException("can't do"); }` Especially after the last insider account tampering event.