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Twitter hack has profound national security implications
- ourmandave 6y agoSHALL WE PLAY A GAME? Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War? HOW ABOUT A NICE GAME OF CHESS?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ldoughty 6y agoThis looks like another "Twitter was hacked" articles... There's virtually nothing about the article about national security... Disappointing. Here's a national security concern: a president announced he's going to war. Or a military tweets they've lost control of their nukes... Or reports a widespread network communication fault and advises all personal to communicate through a specific channel (which might degrade security) If you were hoping for national security concerns, don't bother reading the article.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y agoIf the hacker used Trump's account to call for an immediate call to arms and to attack <enter group here>, enough people could have done something to trigger a civil war.
- iso8859-1 6y agoHow sure about this are you? Trump is already doing what he can to start a civil war, and it has only partially worked so far ;)
- idoh 6y agoDo you actually think we are one tweet away from a civil war?
- whymauri 6y agoPerhaps the right tweet might do it. Trump has incited violence, explicitly and in subtext, before. So it's not a matter of a simple call-to-arms, like in the past, but then I'm not sure what would be the tipping point.
- idoh 6y agoPredicting the future is fraught with peril. It seems likely that Trump will not win a reelection this November, and seems closer than ever that we will have a peaceful transition of power at that time, versus where we were a year or two ago. Historically civil wars happen when the government hasn't had a change of power in a long time, and not in situations where it cycles over regularly.
- whymauri 6y agoRight - but the question asked was not "Are we going to have a Civil War?" it was "Are we one tweet away?" which I interpret as "Could one tweet conceivably start a Civil War?" Conceivably: yes. Likely: no.
- Fjolsvith 6y ago> It seems likely that Trump will not win a reelection this November Don't get all confident about this. Lots of "secret" Trump voters have become angry at the MSM/Dems and are gaming the polls that say Biden will win.
- arrosenberg 6y agoProbably not a civil war, but a race riot or acts of terrorism? Sure, we've already seen the latter.
- idoh 6y agoYes, fair enough, and to your point has already happened.
- cosmie 6y ago
- marcus_holmes 6y agothis kinda highlights "why didn't they use Trump's account?" If they were in it for the money, this would have been the jackpot. All those Drumpfels pouring bitcoins into the account... But they say they're sending the money to "the right places". Maybe those "right places" aren't aligned with ripping off Drumpfels.
- bathtub365 6y agoWhat's a "Drumpfel" and what makes them uniquely suited to sending crypto to random addresses?
- SmokeyHamster 6y agoContrary to public opinion, Twitter is not the center of the known universe. Democrats and BLM activists routinely post things like that (death threats, "kill wheety", "republicans must burn", etc), and despite many left wing radicals actually committing acts of violence, little wide spread action has come of it. A hack to Trump's account might cause a little havoc, but as the vast majority of Americans do not use Twitter, and get their news elsewhere, I doubt it would cause much harm beyond what we already see on a daily basis. The White House and other real news outlets would just issue statements publicizing the hack and that would be the end of it.
- esturk 6y agoDid you read the article entirely? `And that makes you wonder what contingencies the company has put into place in the event that it is someday taken over not by greedy Bitcoin con artists, but state-level actors or psychopaths. After today it is no longer unthinkable, if it ever truly was, that someone take over the account of a world leader and attempt to start a nuclear war.` It's pretty disingenuous if you read the article and still says there's nothing there and then repeat the same thing the article wrote.
- ldoughty 6y agoI think you quoted the entirety of the article that addresses national security... The other 95% of the article was recap of what every article says about the incident, or otherwise not related to national security... I was excited to read any possible national security implications, perhaps things I wasn't even thinking of... And I was disappointed that the 2 sentences you posted, buried in the tail of a rather long article, were the justification for the headline "profound national security implications"... I at least hypothesized potential national security risks, instead of making vague national security claims... The article is using those 2-3 sentences to give a scarier headline to drive clicks, when it's not much better than the other stories already on here.
- Fjolsvith 6y ago> Here's a national security concern: a president announced he's going to war. I wouldn't worry about that. Twitter's anti-violence tweet policy will censor any proclamation of war.
- whoisjuan 6y agoI wonder why they didn't target Donald Trump's account. My guess is that there's some accounts hidden behind a different structure that is only accesible to a handful of people. Or maybe they just didn't want to shake the hornet's nest.
- dmix 6y agoIn 2017 a Twitter employee already got fired for momentarily deleting his account. After that incident I doubt the regular employee admin panel has access to it. Probably a few accounts require special admin privileges (world leader accounts I assume). Which would be a much more reasonable explanation than the conspiracies being floated and could also imply that Twitter has thought about the "national security" scenarios in the article.
- Diskutant 6y agoHe wasn't fired for it. He did it on his last day. https://twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926267806261407744 https://twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926267806261407744
- echelon 6y agoWas that employee questioned by the FBI? Did they face further consequences? You shouldn't be able to get away with something like that.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> You shouldn't be able to get away with something like that An account on a private service was deleted. Not a brilliant move. But not something that merits more than being fired and possibly pursued for money damages.
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- knolax 6y agoJesus Christ, everything is a matter of "national security" nowadays. Celebrities' favorite shitposting platform is not a critical piece of infrastructure or a real tool for soft power. Could whoever flagged this care to explain?
- throwaway287391 6y agoYou might be right (or at least closer to it) if the current POTUS didn't regularly use Twitter to make actual policy pronouncements with significant real-world consequences.
- knolax 6y agoCan you give an example?
- throwaway287391 6y agohttps://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/donald-trump-tweets-transgender-military-service-ban/579655/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/donald-...
- vharuck 6y agoCopying a quote I shared in a previous discussion about the hack's implications: "Justice Department lawyer Jennifer Utrecht in her reply [in a Supreme Court case] acknowledged the president’s tweets are official government statements" [bracketed text inserted for context] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/can-president-trump-block-his-critics-on-twitter-federal-appeals-court-will-consider-that-today/2019/03/25/49e3f64e-4e4f-11e9-a3f7-78b7525a8d5f_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/can-presid...
- knolax 6y agoA statement and a proclaimation are distinct. A proclaimation implies that it's an announcement meant to be widely seen. In truth I don't think even Trump's supporters pay attention to his Twitter.
- stanfordkid 6y agoI actually think it's a positive thing that the media system is being shaken. Society puts way too much trust in shit that is posted on twitter. I feel the same way about cancel culture on twitter -- it is bad in the short term, but if it incentivizes people like Yann Lecunn to leave it -- it reduces the importance of the medium itself.
- octernion 6y agohow is it bad that a rich white & powerful ML engineer left twitter because he is trying to defend a racist systemic problem. just improves twitter in my opinion.
- isoskeles 6y agoCan you explain why it is relevant that he's white?
- octernion 6y agocan you explain what research you have done in the racism in tech space? edit: i mean this in good faith since that question is an incredibly complicated one involving power dynamics and systemic issues that can't be boiled down to a simplistic answer. why the downvotes?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ciarannolan 6y agoNo explanation necessary. It's the same old racism, but with a new 2020 twist: it's ok as long as it's racism against people we don't like. Check out the recent spate of black athletes and celebrities posting openly anti-Semitic comments on social media (one directly (mis)quoting Hitler re: Jews) with zero repercussions. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2020/07/08/stephen-jackson-defends-desean-jacksons-fake-adolf-hitler-quote-posts/5399430002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2020/07/08/stephen... https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/jewish-leaders-condemn-hurtful-words-nick-cannon-71810371 https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/jewish-leader... https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/9400472/ice-cube-criticized-anti-semitic-images-conspiracy-theories https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/9400472/i... A really thoughtful piece about this by Kareem Abdul Jabbar here too: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kareem-abdul-jabbar-is-outrage-anti-semitism-sports-hollywood-1303210 https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kareem-abdul-jabbar-i...
- ProAm 6y agoTwitter has nothing to do with national security. Official national communication comes from offical government offices through official communication channels and/or on official letterhead. Twitter is a social message board, whether people want to believe that or not. Nothing said on twitter has to be true or accurate or authentic.
- bovermyer 6y agoSeveral government agencies would disagree with you.
- travisjungroth 6y agoIncluding the White House. "The President is the President of the United States, so they're considered official statements by the President of the United States" https://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/trump-tweets-official-statements/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/trump-tweets-off...
- Analemma_ 6y agoYou're making a serious is-ought confusion here. Everything in your post is obviously how the world should be, but is just as obviously not how it currently is.
- ProAm 6y ago> but is just as obviously definitely not how it is. I think yesterdays events prove otherwise? I see what you mean though, but society is largely *dumb* if they get official news from unofficial sources it's their fault no?
- kwk1 6y ago> I think yesterdays events prove otherwise? Can you elaborate? > I see what you mean though, but society is largely dumb if they get official news from unofficial sources it's their fault no? What does fault have to do with anything though?
- anonu 6y agoI was imagining how much worse this hack could have been if a tweet came from @RealDonaldTrump: I tried to be nice to Little Rocket Man but the time for games is over. China has not been helpful in keeping @KimJongUn in check. We will now take matters into our own hands. Kinda surreal to think about a fake tweet having a real geopolitical implication where people's lives are at risk.
- akmarinov 6y agoWhile aggressive, that won’t really do anything Something along the lines of > I’ve instructed the Pentagon to immediately launch an attack on North Korea and China, using any force necessary (even nuclear). God bless Would do the trick
- TrainedMonkey 6y agoThe sad thing is - this reads incredibly fake because of lack of typos.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- elchin 6y agoIs there a postmortem on how the hack happened?
- akmarinov 6y agoNope, still looking into it, but at first glance it seems someone paid off a Twitter employee to get a hold of some accounts. Which makes it really concerning, Twitter can essentially impersonate the President and influence the markets, start a war, etc
- coldcode 6y agoWhich would indicate a terribly lack of security awareness at Twitter. Security of your primary business and customers should not be considered optional.
- stri8ed 6y agoThe most info I have seen thusfar https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxd3d/twitter-insider-access-panel-account-hacks-biden-uber-bezos https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxd3d/twitter-insider-ac...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- devalgo 6y agoTwitter employees were duped by social engineering. Hacker gained access to their credentials, used them to get access to internal Twitter tools that allowed them to takeover Accounts. Not very sophisticated but still alarming that random Twitter employees have access to this kind of tool and don't have better internal account security.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- the-pigeon 6y ago
- btmiller 6y agoA recent thought I had. Before a service can be authorized for use by public officials, it should go through security compliance similar to PCI, PII, or SOX. Most public offices obviously don't command armies nor nuclear codes, but ones that do should be subject to more rigorous vetting of the services they are authorized to use. Had the recent vulnerability been a different message from, say, a certain prominent Twitter account, there could be very, very, very disastrous results.
- mc32 6y agoI’m not sure. All those things do is ensure you check lots of boxes, but they don’t necessarily increase security.
- nemothekid 6y agoAFAIK, Nothing in PCI/PII/SOX would have explicitly prevented what we saw today (if the rumors are true).
- SilasX 6y agoStupid questions: Did the attacks involve a duped Twitter employee changing high-value account emails? Without a second person reviewing? And wouldn't PCI have something against that?
- Avicebron 6y agoSo far it seems it did involve a Twitter employee: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxd3d/twitter-insider-access-panel-account-hacks-biden-uber-bezos https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxd3d/twitter-insider-ac...
- nemothekid 6y ago>And wouldn't PCI have something against that? AFAIK (the spec is huge) PCI-DSS doesn't have a two-man rule requirement. Twitter is arguably doing everything PCI-DSS requires as its good security hygiene anyways.
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- stri8ed 6y agoGiven the ability to completely access arbitrary Twitter accounts using an internal tool, begs the question, how else has this been exploited?
- baddox 6y agoIf this Twitter hack has profound national security implications, then Twitter itself already has profound national security implications that weren’t being appropriately recognized or addressed.
- dijit 6y agoI think that's true and is definitely part of the larger discussion; when a platform has the power to begin a war; maybe more eyes should be focused on the responsibility of the platform.
- brandonmenc 6y ago> when a platform has the power to begin a war; maybe more eyes should be focused on the responsibility of the platform. Or, we break up and/or shut down the platform.
- dvtrn 6y agoThere’s a small part of my brain that wonders what the vacuum effect of twitter suddenly disappearing would even look like. Partly terrified but infinitely curious to poke that hypothetical techno-philosophical bear.
- dogfoods 6y agoPOTUS tweeting nuclear tweets didn't convince you of that already?
- SmokeyHamster 6y agoIs a nuclear tweet like a regular tweet that has a half life of 20,000 years?
- dogfoods 6y agoThat should say threats* not tweets, dammit.
- tgbugs 6y agoThis kind of scenario is exactly why I imagined that the very first thing that the secret service would do is snap Trump's phone in half and throw it in the bin. Yet another thing to add to the long list of new legislation that needs to be written, though I'm not sure how it do it. "All government officials using twitter must also post the PGP signature of any tweets they plan to make BEFORE they post them to twitter, and also post them to _some other service_ as well."
- fuddle 6y ago"noted cryptocurrency enthusiast Elon Musk" - Hmm, I wouldn't exactly describe Musk as a cryptocurrency enthusiast.
- jooize 6y agoA recent tweet of his indicated he is!
- rossdavidh 6y agoIt's not his most significant characteristic, but that doesn't mean he isn't one.
- peterwwillis 6y agoTwitter as a platform is engineered to be pithy, immediate, and constantly engaging with as little forethought as possible. It's a machine for viral stupidity. You could call it a mis-communication tool. I get why people like to use it, but people also like slowing down to stare at car crashes on the highway. Maybe it's not a good thing.
- SmokeyHamster 6y agoTwitter was originally intended as a way to post personal statuses. Short messages that are self-contained enough to require little elaboration. Only when people started using Twitter to have long-form political and philosophical conversations of controversial topics, things that inherently require more than 120 characters to properly communicate, did it devolve into a mis-communication tool.
- langitbiru 6y agoI wonder whether this problem can be mitigated by signing tweets with cryptography signature. Then people can put the public key in the blockchain or third-party websites. The user can sign the message with their private key and other people can verify it with the user's public key. So if the attacker can gain access of Twitter system, at least they can not forge the message. But of course they can do other damages, such as reading private messages.
- simonsarris 6y agoProbably not the intent, but the consequence of the twitter hack was actually a benevolent psyop to remind all world leaders to not take any given tweet too seriously. White hat of the decade. Unironically might have done more for world peace than anyone in 2020.
- SmokeyHamster 6y agoA white hat would not have used a real bitcoin address in the message. This was a gray hat, at best. I'm curious if anyone actually fell for the scam. Considering the millions of people who follow the collective accounts effected, even if 1% were stupid enough to be dupped (and yet know how transfer bitcoin), that might have been quite a windfall for the hacker.
- cosmojg 6y ago> Within the first hours of the attack, people were duped into sending more than $118,000 to the hackers.
- t0mmyb0y 6y agoI fail to see how anything about twitter has any national security implications. Idiots following idiots following idiots.
- jimktrains2 6y agoThe president had made official communications first, and perhaps only via Twitter and has claimed it is an official channel for the president. There have been a few times people have found out about being fired or policies announced via Twitter with very little follow up to the people on the ground. For example, if Trump's account had tweet something akin to "all us borders and ports are closed" it would be expected for all border agents to immediately close ports of entry, as similar happened during the original travel ban.
- rossdavidh 6y agoWell, for example, the claim is that Barack Obama and Joe Biden had their Twitter accounts hacked as well. You could easily have put words in their mouth that would tip the electoral balance, especially if it happened a few months from now. Being able to discredit a candidate, or confuse their followers, has national security implications.
- SmokeyHamster 6y agoEh, not really. According to this (https://www.omnicoreagency.com/twitter-statistics/ https://www.omnicoreagency.com/twitter-statistics/), "There are 48.35 million monthly active Twitter users in the US." That means the vast majority of Americans do not use Twitter. And according to this (https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-tw...), about 80% of the tweets are made by 10% of the users, and most of them are disproportionately young Democrats. So Twitter is an echochamber within an echochamber. Were Biden's or Obama's accounts to be hacked, the only effect it would have would likely be with only the extreme fringe of the party. Most Democrats, and virtually all Republicans, would never see it.
- netsharc 6y agoHave you seen the team that runs the country? Idiots with militaries behind them (with generals who are too chickenshit/dumb to defy orders) are still deadly.
- jart 6y agoThe hacker could have done something subtle to possibly game all those Wall Street AI bots they've surely plugged into the Twitter firehose by now. No one would have been the wiser. Instead we got Obama demanding Bitcoins which is so outrageously obvious that we now might finally stand a chance of loosening those pursestrings so we can do more to improve infrastructural weaknesses. Good show.
- tmaly 6y agoThe have been plugged into the hose for nearly a decade now.
- netsharc 6y agoYeah, a "cleverer" hack would be to buy stocks, and then get the accounts of Obama, Biden, etc, to tweet "We have the cure!" and link to a faked press release about a cure for Covid (how hard would it be to hack a pharma company's website?). The stock markets would probably go through the roof, and you can make a nice profit, and you'd look like just another Robinhood trader.
- whack 6y agoPeople are underestimating the impact a Twitter hack would have on the world. Imagine if instead of doing an overt hack, a malicious actor instead use the POTUS account to tweet something extremely controversial, such as a racial slur. The fallout would be immense, and can single-handedly swing an election. The hacking of Hillary Clinton's email, is only the tip of the iceberg. We are at the dawn of weaponized-cyberhacks as a way of subverting political systems.
- iHegazy 6y agothe naïve way of using the breach was just surprisingly stupid. they could've done far worse things with such access.