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You have total control of 15 Twitter accounts of your choosing for 90 minutes. What do you do? This Twitter hack could have changed history, could have made so

You have total control of 15 Twitter accounts of your choosing for 90 minutes. What do you do? This Twitter hack could have changed history, could have made some group of insiders fabulously wealthy, could have started a war, etc. Yet they "waste" it on an obvious scam. My competing hypotheses: - The hacker got way in over his head and panicked (the wasted opportunity branch) - The hacker siphoned the DMs from the hacked accounts (and others that did not tweet out the scam), and this is just the beginning - There are larger forces at work, and this was a demo for a larger client and is part of a longer play

shadowgovt 6y ago
Occam's Razor suggests the likeliest scenario is that the hacker got in way over his head and panicked. Most hackers aren't international criminal masterminds; they're infosec warriors or, fundamentally, bored clever people who enjoy the puzzle of finding out the true limits of what can be done with the technology in front of them. The name of 2600 magazine is inspired by the story of people who---having discovered the worldwide telecommunications grid could be manipulated by properly-sequenced audio tones---used that knowledge and power to make free long-distance phone calls.
Sebb767 6y ago
Additional hypotheses: - The hacker intentional choose a rather low-crime way with modest damage amount so that Twitter catches most the heat and he doesn't have all three letter agencies hunting for his head. - He knows that OP-SEC is hard and choose a way that was simple enough to avoid traps.
- katmannthree 6y ago
  Certainly possible but I think the bar has absolutely been passed for three-letter agency involvement.
  - Sebb767 6y ago
    Sure, but millions of stock market damages are another league than a bit of chaos on Twitter and 120k$ in scammed money. You can easily find a car which is worth more. So yes, there's definitely going to be a search, but he could've gotten far more heat.
    - twodave 6y ago
      Not to mention he can literally just sit on the BTC until he decides how to best convert it into cash anonymously. And if he hasn’t already goofed up in a way that will get him caught then there’s basically 0 risk of legal repercussions at this point.
gruez 6y ago
>- There are larger forces at work, and this was a demo for a larger client and is part of a longer play seems unlikely, considering that the nature of the hack (compromised insider account) would most likely be cut off after detection. That's exactly what happened in this case.
dudul 6y ago
Can we stop with this idiotic "Could have started WW3" comment? I can't believe the amount of "blue checks" who've been repeating that since last night. How do you start a war on Twitter? Let's say the hacker impersonates Trump and tweet "Missiles heading your way Kim!!", then what? First of all, every develop nation in the world has ways to detect missile launches. Second, there would just be a phone call between embassy asking "Whut??" and the situation would be solved in 15 minutes. People need to stop pretending that Twitter is the real world.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Yes, given that there have been real life incidents where the _missile detection systems_ said there were missiles on the way, and it was all sorted out, the "twitter starting a war" thing seems extremely alarmist. No-one would take a tweet, especially from bloody _Trump_, as sufficient evidence of an attack.
- manquer 6y ago
  Certainly a single tweet like that will not start a war . The tweets would have to be subtle and not something you wouldn’t say or now can back down from easily without damaging your reputation . Social engineering is not a hammer , it needs find grained understanding of psychology , pressure points and what resonates with the crowds , these are skills which blue checks also need to be well blue checks that’s probably why they are more scared . manipulating public opinion is their day job after all . Deep fakes and hacks like this are scary for them coz these attack at the core of their strength - the trust the people have in them and their ability to manipulate it .
- closeparen 6y ago
  You might enjoy The 2020 Commission Report, speculative fiction by a foreign policy PhD specializing in nuclear proliferation. One of his central interests is how these decisions are made. Where is the conference room? Where are the decision-makers? What does it take to get them assembled? What are their moods and information diets, and how might that influence them in a moment of crisis? What are plausible sequences of "accidental" escalation events that might align the stars for a nuclear launch? And how might Trump's Twitter interact with all of this? It's fiction, obviously, but if you're interested in the guy's bona fides, this is some really fascinating open source intelligence work [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9QbI8Jf4hg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9QbI8Jf4hg

shadowgovt 6y ago

Occam's Razor suggests the likeliest scenario is that the hacker got in way over his head and panicked. Most hackers aren't international criminal masterminds; they're infosec warriors or, fundamentally, bored clever people who enjoy the puzzle of finding out the true limits of what can be done with the technology in front of them. The name of 2600 magazine is inspired by the story of people who---having discovered the worldwide telecommunications grid could be manipulated by properly-sequenced audio tones---used that knowledge and power to make free long-distance phone calls.

Sebb767 6y ago

Additional hypotheses: - The hacker intentional choose a rather low-crime way with modest damage amount so that Twitter catches most the heat and he doesn't have all three letter agencies hunting for his head. - He knows that OP-SEC is hard and choose a way that was simple enough to avoid traps.

katmannthree 6y ago
Certainly possible but I think the bar has absolutely been passed for three-letter agency involvement.
- Sebb767 6y ago
  Sure, but millions of stock market damages are another league than a bit of chaos on Twitter and 120k$ in scammed money. You can easily find a car which is worth more. So yes, there's definitely going to be a search, but he could've gotten far more heat.
  - twodave 6y ago
    Not to mention he can literally just sit on the BTC until he decides how to best convert it into cash anonymously. And if he hasn’t already goofed up in a way that will get him caught then there’s basically 0 risk of legal repercussions at this point.

gruez 6y ago

>- There are larger forces at work, and this was a demo for a larger client and is part of a longer play seems unlikely, considering that the nature of the hack (compromised insider account) would most likely be cut off after detection. That's exactly what happened in this case.

dudul 6y ago

Can we stop with this idiotic "Could have started WW3" comment? I can't believe the amount of "blue checks" who've been repeating that since last night. How do you start a war on Twitter? Let's say the hacker impersonates Trump and tweet "Missiles heading your way Kim!!", then what? First of all, every develop nation in the world has ways to detect missile launches. Second, there would just be a phone call between embassy asking "Whut??" and the situation would be solved in 15 minutes. People need to stop pretending that Twitter is the real world.

rsynnott 6y ago
Yes, given that there have been real life incidents where the _missile detection systems_ said there were missiles on the way, and it was all sorted out, the "twitter starting a war" thing seems extremely alarmist. No-one would take a tweet, especially from bloody _Trump_, as sufficient evidence of an attack.
manquer 6y ago
Certainly a single tweet like that will not start a war . The tweets would have to be subtle and not something you wouldn’t say or now can back down from easily without damaging your reputation . Social engineering is not a hammer , it needs find grained understanding of psychology , pressure points and what resonates with the crowds , these are skills which blue checks also need to be well blue checks that’s probably why they are more scared . manipulating public opinion is their day job after all . Deep fakes and hacks like this are scary for them coz these attack at the core of their strength - the trust the people have in them and their ability to manipulate it .
closeparen 6y ago
You might enjoy The 2020 Commission Report, speculative fiction by a foreign policy PhD specializing in nuclear proliferation. One of his central interests is how these decisions are made. Where is the conference room? Where are the decision-makers? What does it take to get them assembled? What are their moods and information diets, and how might that influence them in a moment of crisis? What are plausible sequences of "accidental" escalation events that might align the stars for a nuclear launch? And how might Trump's Twitter interact with all of this? It's fiction, obviously, but if you're interested in the guy's bona fides, this is some really fascinating open source intelligence work [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9QbI8Jf4hg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9QbI8Jf4hg