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I think people are still severely under-estimating how dangerous this was. Back in 2013 when The Associated Press was hacked with a tweet of "Breaking: Two Exp

I think people are still severely under-estimating how dangerous this was. Back in 2013 when The Associated Press was hacked with a tweet of "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured" and erased $136 billion in equity market value: Archive: http://archive.is/8lCMV http://archive.is/8lCMV https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/04/23/syrian-hackers-claim-ap-hack-that-tipped-stock-market-by-136-billion-is-it-terrorism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/04/23... This twitter hack could have literally destroyed economies, started a war, potential for black mailing politicians and others etc. This really needs to be looked at with much bigger eyes. This wasn't just a bitcoin scam.

brown9-2 6y ago
Yes it was dangerous, but nothing is “erased” if that market valuation is restored a few minutes later
- slg 6y ago
  For a market to move, people need to buy and sell. So while value might not be erased on a global scale if the market recovers to the original position, lots of people will lose (and gain) large amounts of money.
- ZachPruckowski 6y ago
  In the aggregate sense, it eventually netted out. But a lot of people who sold when it looked like prices were collapsing sure got a pretty decent chunk of their bank accounts "erased".
  - edoceo 6y ago
    Panic sellers always have that problem tho, regardless of the source of panic
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    I fail to see that anything or anyone could be blamed besides themselves. We cannot have the net to be emotional support for investors.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- blisseyGo 6y ago
  That's not true. Many people have auto-sell / buy triggers set up when something drops below a value.
  - singhrac 6y ago
    I don't know about many. I don't know of any retail investors that do, and if I did I would have guessed that they'd be buying when prices drop, not selling.
    - gkop 6y ago
      Parent did say “sell / buy” (perhaps they ninja edited). A limit buy order is a basic tool of retail investors (like me :) ) and may have been what parent was thinking of. That said, I don’t agree with parent or great grandparent that the destructive impact is large.
  - ceo_tim_crook 6y ago
    there have been flash crashes before one reason why there are circuit breakers
amatecha 6y ago
It's almost as if web services that let people post whatever they want at any time, vulnerable to whatever security flaws may be present, shouldn't be used as a reliable source for up-to-the-minute information about literally anything important at all.
- djmetzle 6y ago
  This. We've entered a world where the lowest common denominator of information is being used as primary source for current events. That's asinine.
  - phs318u 6y ago
    But is that really new? Other than scale and reach (quantitative difference), how is that any different qualitatively from the old grapevine/gossip network? "My dad's co-worker's, girlfriend's uncle works at ... and said..."
    - gameswithgo 6y ago
      the scale and reach
    - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
      “My dad's co-worker's, girlfriend's uncle works at ... and said...” doesn’t reach the whole world instantaneously
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        It does now.
    - mc32 6y ago
      That didn't get disseminated and diffused to tens of millions. If something was published they'd look for official sources or corroborating sources and or secondary evidence. If AP, EFE, UPI, Kyodo, Interfax etc all get their news from one source [Twitter] that's just laziness.
untog 6y ago
Well, it was just a Bitcoin scam... it had the potential to be huge like the AP hack but the hackers didn't use the exploit to its full potential. Why, I have no idea. Imagine if a raft of prominent blue ticked accounts started tweeting about a disaster. The market would have tanked.
gowld 6y ago
It didn't "erase" anything. A few day traders gave money to a few other day traders.
KiranRao0 6y ago
I wonder if the hacked could have made more if they instead used Musk's Twitter account for something like that while shorting Tesla.
- rblatz 6y ago
  Or used a more believable scam? They took over coinbase’s Twitter. They could have announced some new trading system and to reserve your spot in the line for the beta deposit $100 worth of bitcoin to this address.
  - qroshan 6y ago
    If bitcoin cult knew how to leverage technology into useful applications, they wouldn't be in......bitcoin
- missedthecue 6y ago
  I don't know... just a few weeks ago musk literally tweeted that the stock was too high but it just went higher
  - totony 6y ago
    Iirc it actually went down before going back higher.
kkotak 6y ago
What you call value is really speculations. There is really no association between the value generated by corporations and what the traders think they'll make off trading its stock.
Thorentis 6y ago
To me, this means that too much trust is placed in social media, rather than we need to police/secure social media more. Social engineering will always be successful to hack into accounts, and hackers are always 1-step ahead of whatever security measures are in place. It is the trust that our society has placed in social media for news/announcements/politics that is the issue.
phs318u 6y ago
Agreed. This was most likely a "shot across the bow" by a state actor. I have no proof of this. But it's highly public nature would seem to argue against a black-hat commercial interest (e.g. proof of potential to a possible buyer) as it would/will draw too much scrutiny. Also, the crystal clear implication that the damage done could have been far worse, would seem to indicate someone was sending a message. From whom and to whom can only be the subject of speculation, but again, whoever did this must have known that the it would be interpreted as an attack from China to the USA. So either they didn't care because making that obvious was the whole point (ergo, attacker probably China), or the misdirection was the whole point (ergo, attacker probably a power that would stand to benefit from increased tension between USA and China).
- blisseyGo 6y ago
  Do we know if it was China? Could this be related to the Executive Order POTUS signed yesterday on Hong Kong Normalization? https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidents-executive-order-hong-kong-normalization/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidents-e...
- shostack 6y ago
  Could the entity who committed this attack verify that it was them via their Bitcoin wallet?
- famouslastwords 6y ago
  >Agreed. This was most likely a "shot across the bow" by a state actor. The hack would have been a powerful weapon if used in a more strategic way. A "shot across the bow" as a tactic is useless when the weapon can only be used a single time and never again. The code will be patched now. >Also, the crystal clear implication that the damage done could have been far worse, would seem to indicate someone was sending a message. That's hindsight knowledge. To me it looks more like an un-sophisticated actor that stumbled over a critical vulnerability and had to use it haphazardly before it somehow becomes obsolete with code update. >From whom and to whom can only be the subject of speculation, but again, whoever did this must have known that the it would be interpreted as an attack from China to the USA. So either they didn't care because making that obvious was the whole point (ergo, attacker probably China), or the misdirection was the whole point (ergo, attacker probably a power that would stand to benefit from increased tension between USA and China). Actually I don't see much speculation that China is behind the hack other than from the people who are quick to blame China anyway. The sloppy execution actually speaks against a nation-state actor. The loss of trust in Twitter only plays into Trump's hand regarding his personal feud with the platform.
wolco 6y ago
Erased as in moved to other markets only to return a short time later.
- blisseyGo 6y ago
  Many people have auto-sell / buy triggers set up when something drops below a value.
  - IAmGraydon 6y ago
    And?
    - grugagag 6y ago
      They should realize that being too vigilant has its own downsides. Autosell is no magic. It fails to see into the future, it might as well go up the second the shares are sold. Tough luck...
  - patmorgan23 6y ago
    The value changed hands, it wasn't erased. The stock market doesn't change the underlying fundamentals of the companies.
nodesocket 6y ago
I really think that world leaders twitter accounts should be on completely separate systems from the twitter world. Like a twitter.gov service. It should be insanely locked down, and twitter employees don't have access to it unless they are certified and thoroughly trained. It's just become that important to the stock market and world policy.
- NateEag 6y ago
  Or, just possibly, world leaders shouldn't be on Twitter. Seems to me having them there is about 99% downside, 1% upside. Disclosure: I dislike Twitter on principle.
dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
People keep saying it could have started a war. Excuse me for being naive but come on—really? This is total sensationalism. What party wouldn’t verify something on twitter through diplomatic channels before going to war? Equity destruction: sure. War: no way.
- kleiba 6y ago
  Donald Trump?
  - dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
    A president can’t just “start a war”, muchless order air strikes. dozens of people are involved. Donald Trump yells and hollers all the time and people send Jared to calm him down. There have already been documented instances of this in the Trump admin, and it wasn’t over tweets.
    - zestyping 6y ago
      Of course he can. He ordered the assassination of Soleimani in Iraq that could very well have led to a war. Wars are the result of a series of escalations. It doesn't take a lot to knock over the first domino.
      - dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
        He ordered it, and it was executed methodically with over a year of preparation. Everyone was on board, or at least enough people were convinced. On the contrary, take what happened when Trump wanted to bomb Syria, and people basically didn't let him. Presidents, especially weak, un-respected ones like Trump, can't just do things like that.
    - computerex 6y ago
      The president has the power to deploy the armed forces abroad without the approval of congress for a period of time.
coronadisaster 6y ago
maybe you just need to trust Twitter (and others) less...
shostack 6y ago
This. It almost seems like a proof of concept for someone selling services to a bigger player, using the Bitcoin angle as a smokescreen. Something like this right before the election or after could wreak havoc if targeted to the right accounts. I imagine certain state sponsors would pay handsomely for that.
- huntermeyer 6y ago
  That was my thought as well. A big stunt to show they can take over some of the largest names on Twitter/world as a proof of concept. Think of what they can do if they fan this out at scale to millions of normal accounts.
  - mpfundstein 6y ago
    pretty dumb criminals then. Exposing their approach to twitter before doing the real thing...
- famouslastwords 6y ago
  >This. It almost seems like a proof of concept for someone selling services to a bigger player, using the Bitcoin angle as a smokescreen. This is rather unlikely. There is nothing left to sell. The vulnerabilty was "burned" in the showcase. The code will now be patched 6 ways till sunday and they will probably uncover even more vulns in the code audit. Twitter got caught with their pants down and they will make sure it doesn't happen againg the same way. If you want to make a display PoC before the sale, let the buyer arbitrarily choose a Twitter account and then do your thing. Taking over dozens of high-profile Twitter accounts the way it happened is just drawing unnecessary attention. Everyone will now trust Twitter less and no one know what kind of new security measure will come of this.
kortilla 6y ago
The only people who lost money during the bid dry-up during that uncertainty were the people greedy enough to sell. I have no sympathy for people who try to time the market on bad news. Fake headlines is part of the bargain. To be clear, that value wasn’t erased. The market makers just lowered their willing bid during the uncertainty.
IAmGraydon 6y ago
Destroyed economies? Started a war? The tiny effect on the market lasted less than 5 minutes. Your post is bordering on comical.
- todd3834 6y ago
  I believe they are referring to the fact that they could have theoretically tweeted the wrong thing from the wrong account that could have caused a war. It isn't extremely likely but not comically unrealistic. Definitely within the realm of possibility.
  - IAmGraydon 6y ago
    How do you envision that happening? I mean the actual chain of events. A tweet is seen and some general launches all ICBMs? They pour their country’s military might into a war because of a tweet that is known to be fake within 3 minutes? No, it is not within the realm of possibility.
    - bluedispatcher 6y ago
      Threaten North Korea Back it up from different reliable sources North Korea launches preemptive strike on South Korea
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      It really shouldn't be too hard to come up with a plausible threat scenario, particularly, say, at a time tensions are already running high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_aler... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_carto... https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/168374 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/168374
    - Reimersholme 6y ago
      Tweet from Trumps account that it’s time for all true patriot militias to take to the street to stop the terrorists in BLM, as the democrats are preventing cops and national guard from handling the situation? A bunch of other voices seemingly agreeing, and a bunch of BLM voices responding to take up arms and show the white people that they won’t back down?
gsich 6y ago
>I think people are still severely under-estimating how dangerous this was. No they don't.
brisance 6y ago
Your point is well-taken, but to put things into perspective… $136 billion is a <1% move in Apple's market cap.
- in3d 6y ago
  I think you mean 10%.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
glitchc 6y ago
Oh please. The rest of the world doesn’t take Twitter as seriously as Americans do. And truth be told, Americans shouldn’t take it seriously either. The platform derives power from the audience. Stop giving it your power.
- mattoxic 6y ago
  So true. it's a toilet. A few months back I told myself no more, I resigned my account and haven't missed it at all. massive time sink, and utterly pointless. It isn't a conversation, it's yelling at a brick wall, then yelling louder when you don't get an answer.
  - jansan 6y ago
    Same here. I realized that using Twitter was just a great waste of time. Deleted my account, became more productive and happier.
    - blaser-waffle 6y ago
      Same with all social media, save for HN and light reddit use. In the process of de-googling my life as well.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- cjohansson 6y ago
  This is true I think. Twitter is mostly a US thing
  - fredoliveira 6y ago
    Consider your biases. 80% of twitter users are outside the US [0], [1]. [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/274565/monthly-active-international-twitter-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/274565/monthly-active-in... [1]: https://www.omnicoreagency.com/twitter-statistics/ https://www.omnicoreagency.com/twitter-statistics/
psadri 6y ago
Important accounts should require 2fa for posting anything.
- Cogito 6y ago
  many of the affected accounts had 2fa.
  - fredoliveira 6y ago
    GP was saying "to post anything", not only to authenticate.
    - Cogito 6y ago
      Good point. This would potentially add a lot of friction for those users, but maybe that is a fine thing. Unless we hear more details, it sounds like this attack was able to get around the 2fa for the authentication, so it seems likely they could get around it for posting. Not sure how much would be added with this 2nd level 2fa.
raxxorrax 6y ago
To be honest, I think that would indicate a dysfunction of equity markets, not necessarily a problem of Twitter. I would like Twitter to be not that important. For politics and other topics.
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
One way to look at this problem is to ask "how to secure Twitter". Another way to look at this problem is to ask whether people should trust Twitter as an official source of information. I think there is a big organisational difference between the AP and Twitter, but that's just me. Twitter does not employ journalists. Twitter is not the press.
- SyneRyder 6y ago
  People who have been interviewed by journalists know they regularly get things wrong, like a game of Telephone Whispers. Journalists are not experts in the topic and get things wrong even when they don't mean to - it might be as simple as mishearing the interviewed person, or rounding up a number that they shouldn't. Sometimes it's far more egregious. At least when Twitter is secure, you see the exact words that were typed, and not through the filter of a reporter who may have misread. I've personally been misquoted in media interviews. Not a major thing, but I could now use that newspaper article to claim I've done more than I really have, because hey, the newspapers said I did! It must be true! (I didn't downvote you though, I think the downvotes are unfair.)
ycombobreaker 6y ago
That market value was recovered in 5 minutes. It sucks for anyone with stop orders, or anyone who got a margin call; but to say it could start wars is really not giving any credit to the humans in the loop.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  Given that Donald Trump basically does policy-making in the open on Twitter these days and foreign countries now treat his account that way, there's an argument to be made that a false tweet on his account could at least push us in the direction of a war. Thankfully, his account is under special 'lock and key' protection, so a regular CS rep can't hijack it.
  - cbzoiav 6y ago
    Additional protection should probably be automatically applied to any account with more than N followers!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
baxtr 6y ago
How fast did the markets recover back in 2013?
peroporque 6y ago
Or maybe it could be seen as a helpful reminder for idiots to not act based on a single source. If some guy on the stock market sells millions of dollar's worth of stock based on a single Tweet, they deserve the consequences.
crispyambulance 6y ago
> This twitter hack could have literally destroyed economies, started a war [...etc.] Woah, slow your roll man, it takes a lot to start a war. And temporary glitches in the market are just that-- temporary glitches. If someone loses their shirt over that they deserve it. It's not hackers which are the true danger, "legit" people abusing media (whatever it may be) are the threat, a good example would be the Stable Genius.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
  I don't want to be glib about this, but I will say that it takes a lot to stop a war once it starts, but starting it.. humans have not been known to be most rational actors[1]. 1. https://www.history.com/news/6-wars-fought-for-ridiculous-reasons https://www.history.com/news/6-wars-fought-for-ridiculous-re...
  - crispyambulance 6y ago
    I expect those are all "last straw" incidents. If it were not for one <whatever-trivial-incident> another would have ignited the war instead. We are very far from a stray remark triggering a war unless either/both sides are already heavily primed and itching for one in the first place.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  I'm not sure starting a civil war in the US is that difficult right now.
dgzl 6y ago
Don't forget the DMs of all these accounts. That could be very valuable information.

brown9-2 6y ago

Yes it was dangerous, but nothing is “erased” if that market valuation is restored a few minutes later

slg 6y ago
For a market to move, people need to buy and sell. So while value might not be erased on a global scale if the market recovers to the original position, lots of people will lose (and gain) large amounts of money.
ZachPruckowski 6y ago
In the aggregate sense, it eventually netted out. But a lot of people who sold when it looked like prices were collapsing sure got a pretty decent chunk of their bank accounts "erased".
- edoceo 6y ago
  Panic sellers always have that problem tho, regardless of the source of panic
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  I fail to see that anything or anyone could be blamed besides themselves. We cannot have the net to be emotional support for investors.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
blisseyGo 6y ago
That's not true. Many people have auto-sell / buy triggers set up when something drops below a value.
- singhrac 6y ago
  I don't know about many. I don't know of any retail investors that do, and if I did I would have guessed that they'd be buying when prices drop, not selling.
  - gkop 6y ago
    Parent did say “sell / buy” (perhaps they ninja edited). A limit buy order is a basic tool of retail investors (like me :) ) and may have been what parent was thinking of. That said, I don’t agree with parent or great grandparent that the destructive impact is large.
- ceo_tim_crook 6y ago
  there have been flash crashes before one reason why there are circuit breakers

amatecha 6y ago

It's almost as if web services that let people post whatever they want at any time, vulnerable to whatever security flaws may be present, shouldn't be used as a reliable source for up-to-the-minute information about literally anything important at all.

djmetzle 6y ago
This. We've entered a world where the lowest common denominator of information is being used as primary source for current events. That's asinine.
- phs318u 6y ago
  But is that really new? Other than scale and reach (quantitative difference), how is that any different qualitatively from the old grapevine/gossip network? "My dad's co-worker's, girlfriend's uncle works at ... and said..."
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    the scale and reach
  - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    “My dad's co-worker's, girlfriend's uncle works at ... and said...” doesn’t reach the whole world instantaneously
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      It does now.
  - mc32 6y ago
    That didn't get disseminated and diffused to tens of millions. If something was published they'd look for official sources or corroborating sources and or secondary evidence. If AP, EFE, UPI, Kyodo, Interfax etc all get their news from one source [Twitter] that's just laziness.

untog 6y ago

Well, it was just a Bitcoin scam... it had the potential to be huge like the AP hack but the hackers didn't use the exploit to its full potential. Why, I have no idea. Imagine if a raft of prominent blue ticked accounts started tweeting about a disaster. The market would have tanked.

gowld 6y ago

It didn't "erase" anything. A few day traders gave money to a few other day traders.

KiranRao0 6y ago

I wonder if the hacked could have made more if they instead used Musk's Twitter account for something like that while shorting Tesla.

rblatz 6y ago
Or used a more believable scam? They took over coinbase’s Twitter. They could have announced some new trading system and to reserve your spot in the line for the beta deposit $100 worth of bitcoin to this address.
- qroshan 6y ago
  If bitcoin cult knew how to leverage technology into useful applications, they wouldn't be in......bitcoin
missedthecue 6y ago
I don't know... just a few weeks ago musk literally tweeted that the stock was too high but it just went higher
- totony 6y ago
  Iirc it actually went down before going back higher.

kkotak 6y ago

What you call value is really speculations. There is really no association between the value generated by corporations and what the traders think they'll make off trading its stock.

Thorentis 6y ago

To me, this means that too much trust is placed in social media, rather than we need to police/secure social media more. Social engineering will always be successful to hack into accounts, and hackers are always 1-step ahead of whatever security measures are in place. It is the trust that our society has placed in social media for news/announcements/politics that is the issue.

phs318u 6y ago

Agreed. This was most likely a "shot across the bow" by a state actor. I have no proof of this. But it's highly public nature would seem to argue against a black-hat commercial interest (e.g. proof of potential to a possible buyer) as it would/will draw too much scrutiny. Also, the crystal clear implication that the damage done could have been far worse, would seem to indicate someone was sending a message. From whom and to whom can only be the subject of speculation, but again, whoever did this must have known that the it would be interpreted as an attack from China to the USA. So either they didn't care because making that obvious was the whole point (ergo, attacker probably China), or the misdirection was the whole point (ergo, attacker probably a power that would stand to benefit from increased tension between USA and China).

blisseyGo 6y ago
Do we know if it was China? Could this be related to the Executive Order POTUS signed yesterday on Hong Kong Normalization? https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidents-executive-order-hong-kong-normalization/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidents-e...
shostack 6y ago
Could the entity who committed this attack verify that it was them via their Bitcoin wallet?
famouslastwords 6y ago
>Agreed. This was most likely a "shot across the bow" by a state actor. The hack would have been a powerful weapon if used in a more strategic way. A "shot across the bow" as a tactic is useless when the weapon can only be used a single time and never again. The code will be patched now. >Also, the crystal clear implication that the damage done could have been far worse, would seem to indicate someone was sending a message. That's hindsight knowledge. To me it looks more like an un-sophisticated actor that stumbled over a critical vulnerability and had to use it haphazardly before it somehow becomes obsolete with code update. >From whom and to whom can only be the subject of speculation, but again, whoever did this must have known that the it would be interpreted as an attack from China to the USA. So either they didn't care because making that obvious was the whole point (ergo, attacker probably China), or the misdirection was the whole point (ergo, attacker probably a power that would stand to benefit from increased tension between USA and China). Actually I don't see much speculation that China is behind the hack other than from the people who are quick to blame China anyway. The sloppy execution actually speaks against a nation-state actor. The loss of trust in Twitter only plays into Trump's hand regarding his personal feud with the platform.

wolco 6y ago

Erased as in moved to other markets only to return a short time later.

blisseyGo 6y ago
Many people have auto-sell / buy triggers set up when something drops below a value.
- IAmGraydon 6y ago
  And?
  - grugagag 6y ago
    They should realize that being too vigilant has its own downsides. Autosell is no magic. It fails to see into the future, it might as well go up the second the shares are sold. Tough luck...
- patmorgan23 6y ago
  The value changed hands, it wasn't erased. The stock market doesn't change the underlying fundamentals of the companies.

nodesocket 6y ago

I really think that world leaders twitter accounts should be on completely separate systems from the twitter world. Like a twitter.gov service. It should be insanely locked down, and twitter employees don't have access to it unless they are certified and thoroughly trained. It's just become that important to the stock market and world policy.

NateEag 6y ago
Or, just possibly, world leaders shouldn't be on Twitter. Seems to me having them there is about 99% downside, 1% upside. Disclosure: I dislike Twitter on principle.

dmitryminkovsky 6y ago

People keep saying it could have started a war. Excuse me for being naive but come on—really? This is total sensationalism. What party wouldn’t verify something on twitter through diplomatic channels before going to war? Equity destruction: sure. War: no way.

kleiba 6y ago
Donald Trump?
- dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
  A president can’t just “start a war”, muchless order air strikes. dozens of people are involved. Donald Trump yells and hollers all the time and people send Jared to calm him down. There have already been documented instances of this in the Trump admin, and it wasn’t over tweets.
  - zestyping 6y ago
    Of course he can. He ordered the assassination of Soleimani in Iraq that could very well have led to a war. Wars are the result of a series of escalations. It doesn't take a lot to knock over the first domino.
    - dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
      He ordered it, and it was executed methodically with over a year of preparation. Everyone was on board, or at least enough people were convinced. On the contrary, take what happened when Trump wanted to bomb Syria, and people basically didn't let him. Presidents, especially weak, un-respected ones like Trump, can't just do things like that.
  - computerex 6y ago
    The president has the power to deploy the armed forces abroad without the approval of congress for a period of time.

coronadisaster 6y ago

maybe you just need to trust Twitter (and others) less...

shostack 6y ago

This. It almost seems like a proof of concept for someone selling services to a bigger player, using the Bitcoin angle as a smokescreen. Something like this right before the election or after could wreak havoc if targeted to the right accounts. I imagine certain state sponsors would pay handsomely for that.

huntermeyer 6y ago
That was my thought as well. A big stunt to show they can take over some of the largest names on Twitter/world as a proof of concept. Think of what they can do if they fan this out at scale to millions of normal accounts.
- mpfundstein 6y ago
  pretty dumb criminals then. Exposing their approach to twitter before doing the real thing...
famouslastwords 6y ago
>This. It almost seems like a proof of concept for someone selling services to a bigger player, using the Bitcoin angle as a smokescreen. This is rather unlikely. There is nothing left to sell. The vulnerabilty was "burned" in the showcase. The code will now be patched 6 ways till sunday and they will probably uncover even more vulns in the code audit. Twitter got caught with their pants down and they will make sure it doesn't happen againg the same way. If you want to make a display PoC before the sale, let the buyer arbitrarily choose a Twitter account and then do your thing. Taking over dozens of high-profile Twitter accounts the way it happened is just drawing unnecessary attention. Everyone will now trust Twitter less and no one know what kind of new security measure will come of this.

kortilla 6y ago

The only people who lost money during the bid dry-up during that uncertainty were the people greedy enough to sell. I have no sympathy for people who try to time the market on bad news. Fake headlines is part of the bargain. To be clear, that value wasn’t erased. The market makers just lowered their willing bid during the uncertainty.

IAmGraydon 6y ago

Destroyed economies? Started a war? The tiny effect on the market lasted less than 5 minutes. Your post is bordering on comical.

todd3834 6y ago
I believe they are referring to the fact that they could have theoretically tweeted the wrong thing from the wrong account that could have caused a war. It isn't extremely likely but not comically unrealistic. Definitely within the realm of possibility.
- IAmGraydon 6y ago
  How do you envision that happening? I mean the actual chain of events. A tweet is seen and some general launches all ICBMs? They pour their country’s military might into a war because of a tweet that is known to be fake within 3 minutes? No, it is not within the realm of possibility.
  - bluedispatcher 6y ago
    Threaten North Korea Back it up from different reliable sources North Korea launches preemptive strike on South Korea
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    It really shouldn't be too hard to come up with a plausible threat scenario, particularly, say, at a time tensions are already running high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_aler... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_carto... https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/168374 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/168374
  - Reimersholme 6y ago
    Tweet from Trumps account that it’s time for all true patriot militias to take to the street to stop the terrorists in BLM, as the democrats are preventing cops and national guard from handling the situation? A bunch of other voices seemingly agreeing, and a bunch of BLM voices responding to take up arms and show the white people that they won’t back down?

gsich 6y ago

>I think people are still severely under-estimating how dangerous this was. No they don't.

brisance 6y ago

Your point is well-taken, but to put things into perspective… $136 billion is a <1% move in Apple's market cap.

in3d 6y ago
I think you mean 10%.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

glitchc 6y ago

Oh please. The rest of the world doesn’t take Twitter as seriously as Americans do. And truth be told, Americans shouldn’t take it seriously either. The platform derives power from the audience. Stop giving it your power.

mattoxic 6y ago
So true. it's a toilet. A few months back I told myself no more, I resigned my account and haven't missed it at all. massive time sink, and utterly pointless. It isn't a conversation, it's yelling at a brick wall, then yelling louder when you don't get an answer.
- jansan 6y ago
  Same here. I realized that using Twitter was just a great waste of time. Deleted my account, became more productive and happier.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Same with all social media, save for HN and light reddit use. In the process of de-googling my life as well.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
cjohansson 6y ago
This is true I think. Twitter is mostly a US thing
- fredoliveira 6y ago
  Consider your biases. 80% of twitter users are outside the US [0], [1]. [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/274565/monthly-active-international-twitter-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/274565/monthly-active-in... [1]: https://www.omnicoreagency.com/twitter-statistics/ https://www.omnicoreagency.com/twitter-statistics/

psadri 6y ago

Important accounts should require 2fa for posting anything.

Cogito 6y ago
many of the affected accounts had 2fa.
- fredoliveira 6y ago
  GP was saying "to post anything", not only to authenticate.
  - Cogito 6y ago
    Good point. This would potentially add a lot of friction for those users, but maybe that is a fine thing. Unless we hear more details, it sounds like this attack was able to get around the 2fa for the authentication, so it seems likely they could get around it for posting. Not sure how much would be added with this 2nd level 2fa.

raxxorrax 6y ago

To be honest, I think that would indicate a dysfunction of equity markets, not necessarily a problem of Twitter. I would like Twitter to be not that important. For politics and other topics.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

One way to look at this problem is to ask "how to secure Twitter". Another way to look at this problem is to ask whether people should trust Twitter as an official source of information. I think there is a big organisational difference between the AP and Twitter, but that's just me. Twitter does not employ journalists. Twitter is not the press.

SyneRyder 6y ago
People who have been interviewed by journalists know they regularly get things wrong, like a game of Telephone Whispers. Journalists are not experts in the topic and get things wrong even when they don't mean to - it might be as simple as mishearing the interviewed person, or rounding up a number that they shouldn't. Sometimes it's far more egregious. At least when Twitter is secure, you see the exact words that were typed, and not through the filter of a reporter who may have misread. I've personally been misquoted in media interviews. Not a major thing, but I could now use that newspaper article to claim I've done more than I really have, because hey, the newspapers said I did! It must be true! (I didn't downvote you though, I think the downvotes are unfair.)

ycombobreaker 6y ago

That market value was recovered in 5 minutes. It sucks for anyone with stop orders, or anyone who got a margin call; but to say it could start wars is really not giving any credit to the humans in the loop.

kevingadd 6y ago
Given that Donald Trump basically does policy-making in the open on Twitter these days and foreign countries now treat his account that way, there's an argument to be made that a false tweet on his account could at least push us in the direction of a war. Thankfully, his account is under special 'lock and key' protection, so a regular CS rep can't hijack it.
- cbzoiav 6y ago
  Additional protection should probably be automatically applied to any account with more than N followers!

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

baxtr 6y ago

How fast did the markets recover back in 2013?

peroporque 6y ago

Or maybe it could be seen as a helpful reminder for idiots to not act based on a single source. If some guy on the stock market sells millions of dollar's worth of stock based on a single Tweet, they deserve the consequences.

crispyambulance 6y ago

> This twitter hack could have literally destroyed economies, started a war [...etc.] Woah, slow your roll man, it takes a lot to start a war. And temporary glitches in the market are just that-- temporary glitches. If someone loses their shirt over that they deserve it. It's not hackers which are the true danger, "legit" people abusing media (whatever it may be) are the threat, a good example would be the Stable Genius.

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
I don't want to be glib about this, but I will say that it takes a lot to stop a war once it starts, but starting it.. humans have not been known to be most rational actors[1]. 1. https://www.history.com/news/6-wars-fought-for-ridiculous-reasons https://www.history.com/news/6-wars-fought-for-ridiculous-re...
- crispyambulance 6y ago
  I expect those are all "last straw" incidents. If it were not for one <whatever-trivial-incident> another would have ignited the war instead. We are very far from a stray remark triggering a war unless either/both sides are already heavily primed and itching for one in the first place.
rbanffy 6y ago
I'm not sure starting a civil war in the US is that difficult right now.

dgzl 6y ago

Don't forget the DMs of all these accounts. That could be very valuable information.