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This makes things sound even fishier. I think there has to be something else going on we don't yet know about. The amount of money this scam will actually ear
by slg 6y ago
This makes things sound even fishier. I think there has to be something else going on we don't yet know about. The amount of money this scam will actually earn the hacker is tiny compared to the potential of this hack and yet they still have enough money left over to bribe a presumably highly paid Twitter employee? Or maybe the Twitter employee is a low paid person which leads back to a question I raised elsewhere in this thread[1], how many people at Twitter have the power to take over these accounts unsupervised? Whatever the number is, this hack is probably an indication that it is too high.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23855328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23855328
- Thorentis 6y agoThe most logical conclusion is that this probably wasn't about money. Plenty of better ways to make money than telling people to give you BTC. I'm expecting a huge data drop on wikileaks/pastebin/wherever of private DMs, images, who knows what else.
- dmix 6y agoPlus there was no way they knew beforehand they'd only make 12BTC. People always overestimate the value of twitter and conversion rates when an actual action is required - even with targeted audiences like cryptocurrency people in this case. People seem to assume everyone takes tweets at face value and won't do a double take when it doesn't sound like something they would normally say. Even here there was plenty of people on HN who were claiming outlandish possibilities while it was happening.
- Scoundreller 6y agoI’m surprised they pulled off that much.
- diab0lic 6y agoI can't help but make the obvious observation here. It's bitcoin... The space has a prior for people who are willing to rush head first into something they don't understand in order to attempt to make a quick buck. I'm surprised it was only 12 BTC.
- 6nf 6y agoThey used several different BTC addresses and even some Monero and other crypto ones. It's not just 12 BTC.
- ALittleLight 6y agoI hope Twitter's report includes a list of all the attacker's tweets.
- SifJar 6y agoBut there's also a precedent of scams like this being posted on twitter, esp. from accounts impersonating e.g. Elon Musk. Just because it's tweeted by an official account doesn't suddenly make it less scammy - sure some people clearly fell for it, but I reckon most people using twitter with an interest in cryptocurrency would immediately recognise these tweets as a scam, regardless of the source
- ngngngng 6y agoI could go for 12 BTC right about now
- nullc 6y agoThey may not have: It's normally for various cons to pay themselves to some extent to add legitimacy to their actions and generate more attention.
- koheripbal 6y agoI'm surprised they didn't get more. Poorly executed, frankly. The tweet just wreaked of spam.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago12 BTC could be retirement level money in some countries.
- fiblye 6y agoNot really, when you factor in inflation, unless you're planning on living in abject poverty your whole life or not planning on living very long. e.g., Vietnam is a livable place and GDP per capita is ~$2600. That'd get you a very modest living. GDP/capita is also up 2x from 10 years ago and 10x from 20 years ago. You could maybe squeak out 20 years with very modest living and few unplanned expenses and assuming the economy and thus cost of living doesn't grow tremendously (like it likely will). Somalia would give you a little more value for your money. But I think if someone suddenly had that much money in Somalia, they'd probably be getting out of Somalia or hoping nobody found out.
- Kiro 6y agoI could easily survive and be happy on 12 BTC for the rest of my life and I live in one of the most expensive countries in the world.
- ben_w 6y ago$110k for the rest of your life? $500/month for 18 years? That wouldn’t cover health insurance plus rent (even though I’m sharing rent with a partner) here in Berlin, and Berlin is cheap compared to the UK or the bits of the USA I’ve visited.
- koheripbal 6y agoSeems more likely that they expected to get more.
- jonny_eh 6y agoJoe Biden was one of the hacked accounts, Trump was not. It's like 2016 all over again.
- zwily 6y agoI’m guessing after the last time Trump was hacked internally, some new control went in place specific for his account.
- CJefferson 6y agoI am struggling to think of any better system than BTC. Almost anything else I can think of would require either (a) substansal amount of starting cash (for example trying to crash Tesla's stock price), or (b) be almost impossible to pull off without getting caught (blackmail, or again stock manipulation if you do it in a big enough way to make some decent money). In terms of risk/reward, assuming someone found some easy trick and wanted to cash out ASAP, this feels like the best option.
- 542458 6y agoI don’t think it would take very much starting cash at all to make money off a Tesla crash. Options can be pretty cheap for moonshots. Alternatively, is it possible they bought options on twitter itself? It’s down 4% in after-hours (which is less than I expected, but still enough delta to make some cash).
- fossuser 6y agoLots of uncertainty, but I could see it being relatively mundane. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of Twitter support people had access to these tools and that they often worked with larger (more valuable) accounts. It also wouldn't surprise me if some employee had a bad 1:1 and then responded to a spear fish just because they were disgruntled. To take payment for it is particularly stupid. Of course, could also be something more serious - but if it's really just the BTC piece and the people are dumb enough to talk to the press, it may not be a group of criminal masterminds. I hope for the employee's sake they have communication that can help the feds catch the BTC group. Either way, an incredibly stupid thing to do on their part and I don't see a good ending for them. If this turns out to be true, they'd be lucky not to go to prison.
- derwiki 6y agoI’m not saying there isn’t one, but curious what you think is the imprisonable offense?
- fossuser 6y agoI’m not a lawyer, but I’d guess something related to wire fraud: https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-941-18-usc-1343-elements-wire-fraud https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
- unishark 6y agoIt seems to generally be a crime to access a computer system you aren't supposed to, regardless of how you came by the login info (phishing, guessing passwords, etc).
- derwiki 6y agoBut the disgruntled employee may have had legitimate access to the system, even if this specific act was illegitimate
- paranoidrobot 6y ago
- sillysaurusx 6y agoThe most reasonable explanation might be that they’re lying to sound cool. Bribery is a thing, but any twitter employee would know that their employment (and future career prospects) would be terminated. On the other hand, $1M in BTC might do the trick. Interesting thought experiment...
- redisman 6y agoThere’s bribery but I think blackmail is even likelier. This is such a huge breach that no one should think they could get away with leaking their credentials or opening a backdoor. Plus Twitter employees are really well paid. Now some life-ruining online behavior material is another type of a motivator.
- unishark 6y agoUnless the employee helped in a way that they didn't realize could be used for such a hack. And/or they just thought it couldn't be traced back to them.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoYou're thinking of an engineer, not a low paid worker in the tech company equivalent of a call center working on repetitive tasks for low pay in India or some other country where labor is cheap. And you're also making the assumption that the accomplice thought about it rationally. All the attacker has to do is find someone who doesn't realize that they will get caught.
- bb2018 6y agoIf they wanted to get as much money as possible without being caught what else could they have done? If that was the case they could only deal with bitcoin. Blackmailing with bitcoin may be smarter but maybe they figured that would be investigated more or treated more harshly? They could have released fake financial tweets and shorted the market - but that still would be investigated much faster. I'm sure the 100k or whatever they got isn't as much as it could be - but for a random dude who paid 10k to a disgruntled employee it is pretty good.
- ajphdiv 6y agoBuy shares in a small publicly traded company. Pump/dump shares. One tweet from musk stating he was adding such and such to all Teslas would send the target company through the roof.
- diab0lic 6y agoThe post you're replying to is suggesting that manipulating the market like that draws the attention of some very powerful organizations. It'll likely be investigated swiftly and they'll come down on you harshly when compared to the consequences of some Bitcoin scamming.
- solotronics 6y agoUS federal agencies actually investigate market activity around big events like 9/11. Very likely to be caught doing that unless you have some way of shuffling money in and out of the market anonymously.
- bb2018 6y agoThough I was the one who suggested this would be easily catchable - Tesla is probably the one company where you could get away with this. There is no shortage of random Robin Hood users making pretty big plays on it constantly.
- qroshan 6y agoGeez every poster is assuming that the hackers knew they would only get 12BTC. In their minds, they are thinking at least 200 Million followers at least 10% success rate. So 2 Million in BTC or several millions of untraceable wealth. BTC hackers aren't exactly known for smartness in other areas
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoI think it's unlikely someone working on "mass" tasks like account recovery is highly paid.
- shp0ngle 6y agoThe same guy used to use his connection/social engineering to overtake "nice" twitter handles and resell them for money. He just got too greedy. I don't think there is something super nefarious involved. Probably some unpaid intern in a third world country where Twitter outsources tech support.
- bemmu 6y ago> The amount of money this scam will actually earn the hacker is tiny compared to the potential of this hack If the attackers had a big short position in TWTR, they may have made a lot more money than they received from BTC.
- alwayseasy 6y agoShorts get caught. Easier to have Elon Musk tweet "I'll buy Hertz at $69 a share to make all their cars autonomous".
- therein 6y agoShorts don't get caught, they'd blend right into the WSB crowd. Also, if you had Elon tweet that, I am not sure if the price will go up or down like you expect. :)
- mekkkkkk 6y agoIs this really true though? If you ramp up multiple short positions under a few weeks from a lot of different accounts, how would you tell? I'm assuming TWTR is a pretty busy stock.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoTo be honest, there's a study out there that says the average employee will their out their employer for $500... I wonder what the skew would be on tech companies.... 10k? 30k?