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Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked
- Bostonian 6y agoAt Ars Technica, few of the commenters are concerned about the erosion of privacy and freedom of speech of Gab users.
- cecja 6y agoYeah, we are all concerned lets hope no one will incite violence or something like that.
- NotChina 6y agoReally shows the belief that some people don't deserve rights.
- pii 6y agoWhat rights, specifically? The right to invite violence against protected classes? Oh right that's not a right
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- objectivetruth 6y agoI agree with you, it's great. Wonderful to see people valuing white supremacists less.
- pii 6y agoWoe is me, the man who knows best how to govern but just won't ever be given the chance
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y agoFirst they came for the fascists, and I was happy. Then it ended, because slippery slope is a fallacy.
- seventytwo 6y agoYep, but even so the “free speech” thing is a false premise to begin with. The public rebuke against places like Parler and Gab is not an attack on free speech. It’s ostracism. Those people still have 100% of their rights to free speech perfectly intact. The constitution protects against restricts on your right to expression. It does not protect against other people refusing to listen to you or refusing to put up with you.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agoWhen they come for you, they'll call you a fascist. Like they did with Steven Pinker.
- input_sh 6y agoWho called him a fascist?
- Veen 6y agoWhile they may not call him a fascist outright—it would be indelicate considering his Jewish ancestry—there are plenty on the left who consider Pinker's thinking a sort of gateway drug to fascism. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/steven-pinker-jordan-peterson-neoliberalism-radical-right/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/steven-pinker-jordan-peters...
- input_sh 6y agoThose two claims are vastly different, aren't they?
- iagovar 6y agoYou'll be a fascist sooner or later, don't worry.
- smt88 6y agoBy this logic, we shouldn't make or enforce laws because someday, someone can pass a law against harmless behavior. Regulation, moderation, and law enforcement are always a balancing act. We can't just say that balance is an impossible dream, so let's just give up.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y agoAt Hacker News, the people concerned about "cancel culture" were, somehow, never concerned about the erosion of privacy and freedom of speech of ISIS. Or just ordinary muslims. Or Sikh that look like muslims to idiots. Or the forever-ban of nipples. Or the freedom of speech of members of House and Senate, typically exercised without gallows waiting for them outside. Or the victims of whaterever-the-fuck #gamergate was. The sloganeering about "freedom of speech" or "cancel culture" has, at this point, really run its course and it's completely obvious that it is but a thin veneer over opinions that, for now, cannot be stated in polite company.
- ignoranceprior 6y agoCan someone explain the difference between Gab and Parler to someone unfamiliar with both?
- cmeacham98 6y agoParler is basically a direct clone of twitter's basic features. They use different names but have features similar to that of Twitter's tweet/like/retweet. Gab's current iteration is a mastodon fork (although iirc they don't participate in the fediverse via activitypub). Gab is similar to Twitter like Parler but is less of a direct clone, offering other features Twitter doesn't have. Gab has been along for longer and seems to be more popular. Both market to the (mostly American) far right, with their shtick being basically "you can say anything that is not directly illegal in the US without fear of being banned or other moderation". Gab seems to have been more competent in coming back up after bans from their hosting provider and other partners.
- leesalminen 6y ago> Both market to the (mostly American) far right, with their shtick being basically "you can say anything that is not directly illegal in the US without fear of being banned or other moderation". It’s incredible that supporting free speech is considered to be only important enough to the “far right” now to be worth marketing to. Free speech used to be something all Americans supported and defended.
- davidlinc1 6y agoIt's not. It happens to be an effective marketing vehicle for this particular audience, so you see it presented first and foremost, in an almost hyperbolic way. They conflate free speech infringements with basic service policies. Doesn't mean that other Americans no longer consider free speech important.
- mint2 6y agowhy do so many people confusedly assume free speech means forcing printers to print neo-nazi propaganda. Whatever happened to freedom of association? Some businesses and people don’t want to associate with neonazis and don’t want to be known as the company that helps neonazis. Why do people who espouse free speech want to take away freedom to choose who one associates with?
- akyu 6y agoRatting people out to the government is hip now... crazy times.
- NotChina 6y agoWho down votes these observations?
- meowster 6y agoIt feels like there a more downvotes these days based on political ideologies instead of low-quality comments.
- bitdizzy 6y agoThis is completely off topic but are you aware that governments are parts of economic systems and there are kinds of governing closely associated with capitalism as a whole?
- Turing_Machine 6y agoPersonally, I consider pro-censorship comments to be low-quality.
- uniqueid 6y agoGab is a site that caters to hate groups. I guess the targets of their hatred take it personally. That seems rational to me.
- errantmind 6y agoCan you provide some evidence they catered to hate groups? It was my understanding they attracted hate groups due to their policy of 'free speech', but did not specifically cater to them
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- NotChina 6y agoTo a Penguin Everything is North...
- 0xy 6y agoIsn't Substack opening themselves up to liability by accepting payments on behalf of a criminal hacking group?
- FDSGSG 6y agoDo you have any evidence to back up your accusation that DDoSecrets is a "criminal hacking group"? I guess not.
- throwawaysea 6y agoIsn’t DDoSecrets basically working with the hackers by hosting/evangelizing/distributing their illegally acquired data? It’s also amazing to me that all those involved with it and the prior Parler hack are allowed to remain on Twitter without even a label on hacked materials, let alone a ban for clear illegal activity. Double standards.
- busrf 6y agoLook at this very secure code written by their CTO: https://archive.vn/oxbck https://archive.vn/oxbck
- Jach 6y agoEarlier when I was looking for what backend stack they used (I had forgotten they forked from Mastodon) I found an article from last November about their new CTO, and had a lol moment: "its newest CTO…former software engineer who spent more than seven years at Facebook…Gab is happy to introduce our new CTO…With 23 years of industry experience, he brings extensive backend infrastructure knowledge and insights from across the stack…worked as a “production engineer and developer advocate” at Facebook"
- hadrien01 6y agoCommit archived here: https://git.rip/gab/gab-social/-/commit/fb3b7545705153022c24bb072fbdb3925b8cbfeb https://git.rip/gab/gab-social/-/commit/fb3b7545705153022c24...
- asabjorn 6y agoAs much as I love open source, Gab should have never been open source. It seems very unwise to make a highly targeted free speech social media platform available for easy backend code analysis. No wonder they were hacked. https://git.rip/gab/gab-social https://git.rip/gab/gab-social
- busrf 6y agoI believe they had to release their source code in order to comply with the AGPL, because they forked off mastodon right? I’m not sure if they decided to go with mastodon as the basis for their codebase in the beginning or if that was a later decision.
- asabjorn 6y agoThats a good point. And because of this they are limited in their mitigation strategies.
- busrf 6y agoI just looked it up and the history is that they did it so that users could access the site using fediverse clients, because their own clients were getting pulled from app stores. https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentralized-social-network-gab-migration-fediverse-app-blocking https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentr... ofc there is that whole discussion about whether open sourcing actually affects application security, having your security model assume that attackers already have access to the source code, etc. Not to mention it looks like they did make quite extensive modifications on top of the mastodon code. Some of the code that people have discovered lying around in the gab codebase is really embarrassing.
- xahrepap 6y agoI don’t believe that Open Source == Less Secure. See also: Linux, Ngix, Postgres... Many many open source projects are secure. They’re not perfect but an argument could be made that they’re more secure BECAUSE they’re open. Software with crosshairs on its back practicing garbage security practices will be pwnd the same regardless of it’s open-ness. Honestly. With a lot of the tools out there these days. I question if it’s even faster to hunt security bugs by reading the source rather than just attempting common exploits via tooling.
- throwawei369 6y agoThis increase of extreme assault on free-speech platforms should be worrying to everyone. Not too long ago, we were hailing the "internet" as a free fair space. Now it is a free fair space ... for everyone but some kind of people. I'm for free speech but this specific kind of targeted attacks is getting out of hand.
- throwawei369 6y agoExhibit A. HN downvoting this comment to hell
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- woutr_be 6y agoIf HN removed your comment it could be seen as an exhibit A. But you being downvoted has nothing to do with free speech, you’re still allowed to say what you wanted, but if people disagree, they have the right to downvote you.
- throw_away892 6y agoExcept I (throwawei) had to login to another account (this one) to reply you as the downvotes triggered some soft ban limit on the account from replying/commenting. So much for free speech... I would post photos holding today's newspaper to prove ownership of both accounts. Probably not worth the trouble anyway
- woutr_be 6y agoYou got banned because some automated system might’ve concluded you were a bot or spam account. You didn’t get banned because of the context of your speech. (At least not to my knowledge)
- throwawei369 6y ago
- kstenerud 6y agoI spent a number of years living in America in the past, and made friends with people across the political spectrum there. And what has always stood out to me is how much hatred and animosity the American right and left have for each other. Talk with someone over beers long enough and they really open up about it, probably because I'm an outsider. As far as political orientation goes, by worldwide standards America actually ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans), but there are many confounding factors due to their society being forced into the mold of one-of-two parties. Indeed, the choice of ideologies and political tactics are downright bizarre, even contradictory to the outside norm of left and right when viewed by a foreigner. What always surprises me is the rabidity of the comments left on sites such as these (both left and right oriented). Although you belong to different tribes, your words are remarkably similar: It seems that you really do see the other party as made up of terrible people, misguided at best, inhuman monsters at worst, unfeeling and callous, perhaps even extermination-worthy in some extreme cases. This is not how politics work in the rest of the world.
- AzzieElbab 6y agoIt is the media and short election cycles. The politicians who serve long terms(senate) generally get along with each other because they have to work together, while members of the house and the president must keep media frenzy since they are constantly in election mode. Also, if you pay attention - it is no longer left vs right, more like localism vs globalism. Of course media portrays localism as nationalism, and globalism as progressivism
- krageon 6y ago> This is not how politics work in the rest of the world. Between radicalised parties it looks like that everywhere. When people have only two choices, by necessity each choice contains radicalised fringe elements. For some reason societal factors in the US give these elements a huge presence, which I don't really understand.
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y agoIts very simple for the other side to push their agenda and cater to their crowd "See , we told you the other side was crazy" 911 truthers & marxists have always existed, however its only when the "mainstream" of the other side chose to hand the fringe a megaphone, that they came to the fore. This was not done for debate or charity. It was to score cheap political points in the age of clickbait. Extra Bonus: they got to extrapolate the extreme over 50% of the US population, and by consequence, to expand their potential eyeball audience
- throwaway69123 6y agoHacked or scraped?
- rndgermandude 6y agoThey got private messages and password hashes and whatnot. And the article mentions "SQL Injection". So gab was hacked, not scraped, unlike parler which was scraped.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kowlo 6y agoI'm seeing many "dead comments" as a result of senseless downvoting in this thread... people are maintaining their bubble
- question000 6y agoI think you're wrong. Your maintaining your bubble by not going through your ex-girlfriends trash can everyday. The community and moderation on this site are actually pretty good, don't demean people who have different ideas about what makes a good dialogue as being in a bubble. If the whole community is in a bubble, downvoted people are even more in a bubble. They are the ones out of sync with the greater picture.
- kowlo 6y agoOf course, you are welcome to your opinion. But I hope the irony isn't lost on you: https://imgur.com/a/WuXdstC https://imgur.com/a/WuXdstC. Later on, things are still propagating: https://imgur.com/a/LzyzZKz https://imgur.com/a/LzyzZKz My parent comment is hovering around 0-5 points. I wonder what it all means.
- question000 6y agoI still have more points then you now. I win.
- anoonmoose 6y agoWell for starters I downvote anyone talking about the number of up or down votes any post has
- ParadiseEclipse 6y agoso, senseless downvoting then?
- anoonmoose 6y ago
- sneak 6y agoThe data hasn't been made available, so whether or not this qualifies as a "leak" is questionable.
- andrew_ 6y agoThese posts always bring out the fascists from both extreme ends of the spectrum, and they dominate the discourse. It's disappointing.
- scotty79 6y agoI wonder if two party system is really so different from one party system since it's the systems of bureaucracy is what dictates lives of people and those pretty much stay the same and evolve very gradually in the direction of profit for the wealthy. Maybe it's more stable because it gives each half of the population their own enemy to hate, and periodical "wins" over that enemy? Maybe China will learn this trick eventually and split into two fractions that will periodically swap the highest positions between themselves?
- unityByFreedom 6y ago10 years ago I'd have agreed that the parties are the same. Now I can't say that, and looking back, I was simply uninformed. I don't think the US government bears any resemblance to authoritarian nations who lock up journalists left and right. The truth is the federal government isn't very strong at all; it's the citizenry who do the heavy lifting, whether that means reporting, growing businesses, or defending our security. We would be much less effective without the willful actions of people every day who believe in what this country is or can be.
- scotty79 6y agoSimilarly in one party system, system of power is even weaker. That's why it resorts to locking up journalists and has to resort to violence against public bit more often than two party system does. Also power comes from the people in single party system as well. They are the one who build economy and meaningfully secure their own environments through various non-obvious systems. Single party system wouldn't be that strong without people just going about their business and building up wealth for the government to reasonably exploit. Parties are not the same. They can't be. But both taken together along with the systems that they interact through they can be seen as single entity. And relations of this single entity with the rest of society are not that different from relations between single party system and country it rules. Any differences come from the fact that two party system has stronger grip and more stability thanks to delivering one thing that people need and single party systems are struggling to credibly provide, and enemy to hate.
- guerrilla 6y agoIn case you missed Gab's CEO responding to this: https://web.archive.org/web/20210228203106/https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1366123617847828483 https://web.archive.org/web/20210228203106/https://twitter.c...
- pnt12 6y agoFrom the first sentence alone, I can already imagine what kind of community Gab has... The "freedom of speech", as in "freedom of hate speech" kind of community, probably.
- bogwog 6y agoSo I guess this means Mastodon has an SQL injection vulnerability?
- anfogoat 6y agoBased on some of the tweets around this, I got the impression the vulnerability was introduced by Gab devs. EDIT: Plus this: > Just to reiterate in relation to Gab getting hacked, I’m not aware of any vulnerabilities in Mastodon at the moment and based on what I have seen in their code modifications the vulnerabilities they have are the ones they themselves introduced (along with never porting security patches from us) (https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/105819655956170794 https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/105819655956170794)
- tibbydudeza 6y agoNever seen so many downvoted comments on hacker news.
- jcpham2 6y agoAlabama technocrat checking in to say I have no involvement with national US politics whatsoever and echo OP’s “wow what the fuck sentiment”. I do sometimes interject myself into local politics but even that is distasteful due to the left vs. right mentality. Born and raised in the US of A, can’t wait until it implodes and the dogs kill each other. Cannot fathom what just happened in this country other than the power of celebrity.
- timsayshey 6y agoI've been following Hacker News for over a decade and my sense of the community is that it has always been overwhelmingly pro free speech at any cost (even in the cases where it would protect something outright illegal). Now I'm hearing from many in the same community that free speech has been "weaponized" and must be controlled for the greater good. What happened? Seriously.
- shrimpx 6y agoTraditional unamplified speech is ok in all shapes, but I think the amplification power of social media has shown the damage hate speech can do at scale, and people have become more cautious about what’s ok to amplify.
- atc 6y agoVery worrying trend against free speech in general, but HN is a litmus test for me.
- iSnow 6y agoI don't feel the same sentiment here. But for the sake of argument, two things have happened: - data driven manipulation by platforms reaching the majority of the population. Pushing the spiciest posts to the top to increase emotional interaction - the emergence of new fascists under the guise of free speech. With the downfall of traditional gatekeepers in media, new gatekeepers have emerged - and they are not the benevolent kind.
- AbrahamParangi 6y agoMany individual beliefs are really tribe beliefs. If the tribe beliefs change then the individual beliefs will change too, because the individual was never really committed to them. This happened recently in 2020 from Jan to May on the Coronavirus. The party of “no big deal” reoriented from left to right and many people reoriented with it. Tribe beliefs on free speech have changed and those who align with those tribes have changed with it.
- undefined1 6y ago
- cmiles74 6y agoWas this really the result of a SQL injection attack? I can't find any details on how data was exfiltrated from the site. With all of the tools available today I would have thought this kind of attack would be pretty uncommon.
- jcims 6y agoI don't know anything about this situation but in general you're absolutely right. Unfortunately when you have thousands of people trying to become the next @donk_enby, 'pretty uncommon' becomes just a matter of time.
- tim333 6y agoApparently their CTO introduced an SQL vulnerability in Feb, then patched https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/rookie-coding-mistake-prior-to-gab-hack-came-from-sites-cto/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/rookie-coding-mistak... Easy to make mistakes I guess. Little Bobby Tables strikes again.
- ghostpepper 6y agoWhy is the second sentence of this article about how the CEO of Gab used a Transphobic slur? It kind of seems like the author threw that in there to make sure the reader agrees with their political views, but the article doesn't say what the slur was, and I don't think the author would defend the idea that being transphobic makes it okay to hack a person's website, but it kind of feels like that's the point implicitly being proposed. It feels like yet another injection of politics into what was previously a tech-focused website.
- phone8675309 6y ago> I don't think the author would defend the idea that being transphobic makes it okay to hack a person's website I wouldn't be so sure of that. > It feels like yet another injection of politics into what was previously a tech-focused website. Technology itself may be politically neutral but its use and creation is inherently political.
- pid_0 6y agoHe said “trannies” I wouldn’t say it’s a transphobic slur. He said it to clearly piss off people though. The ceo sounds like a very secure, happy person with no mental problems. Also, transgender issues aren’t political. Modern monetary theory can be political. Immigration policies are political. Human rights are not political. I’m not a liberal or anything, just a rational person.
- timsayshey 6y agoI think all censorship should be deplored. My position is that bits are not a bug. That we should create communications technologies that allow people to send whatever they like to each other. And when people put their thumbs on the scale and try to say what can and can't be sent, we should fight back - both politically through protest and technologically through software. - Aaron Swartz
- rchaud 6y agoWhat is the context for this quote? Swartz never created a social media platform nor had to make decisions on how to moderate user generated content across millions of users. He made JSTOR articles freely available.
- skynet-9000 6y ago> Swartz never created a social media platform nor had to make decisions on how to moderate user generated content across millions of users. He is credited as a co-founder of Reddit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
- anoonmoose 6y agoSwartz created a company called Infogami "that would help users build websites". That company merged with reddit, which had already raised $100K. Swartz didn't create a social media platform, and he never had to make decisions on how to moderate user generated content across millions of users.
- pnt12 6y agoIt seems Gab banned anti-christian messages. So the 'freedom of speech' in this community is pretty much a dogwhistle for'freedom of alt-right speech'. (Not sure dogwhistle is the right word here, but it's the often case of 'freedom of speech' actually meaning 'freedom of hate speech', like how often 'truth' is used to actually mean 'unscientific conspiracy theories'.)
- joshka 6y agoGAB-PT-3 for president 2024