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U.S. Strategic Command response to FOIA request regarding gibberish tweet
- christophilus 6y agoFolks at Elastic have a shirt that looks something like that. Someone’s kid sent a gibberish company wide email like that.
- qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago5 years later... "Daddy wants to tell you a story about something you did when you were very young"
- globular-toast 6y ago25 years later: you're fired because of that tweet. As you know, semicolons are now considered highly offensive.
- koolba 6y ago> Turns out their Twitter manager left his computer unattended, resulting in his "very young child" commandeering the keyboard. Ignorance of the law does not excuse one from its consequences. For such a serious violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030 I fully expect the child to be put in solitary confinement for the entire duration of nap time.
- temp8964 6y agoCertain privileges shall be ripped off, such as using a pacifier.
- supergirl 6y agoI don't believe there are no written records of the incident. What's making sure the gov is actually following the law and sends everything FOIA requires? Same for GDPR, nothing is stopping a company from sending me only some of the information
- Hnrobert42 6y agoDo you have a reason to doubt the respondents in this particular case?
- supergirl 6y agojust logical. somebody somewhere send an email or chat message about this incident. for example the person who was in charge in twitter account could have sent a message to his manager saying “hey fyi my kid wrote sth on twitter”
- danso 6y agoIf this were a more serious incident, and there was more to investigate and lockdown, it seems much more likely that the STRATCOM info officers would wait, since a response isn't required until 20 business days. They gain absolutely nothing by responding within 12 hours with a cutesy public lie that has the risk of being unraveled by the "real" hacker. The information is not just for the press and the public — every part of the government and the military not directly connected to STRATCOM would believe that the public explanation is correct, which is the last thing you'd want if there really were a security breach.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago> nothing is stopping a company from sending me only some of the information If their database later leaks and shows that they had more info, they're in a world of hurt. The DPA will already be looking for an excuse to punish them (having a breach isn't punishable in itself), so they'll nail them to the wall for this.
- gorpomon 6y agoPeople might balk, but it's no joke how many actions a toddler can trigger on an unattended Macbook. They have a preternatural ability to drag, delete and find the text inputs.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoMy wife recently left the computer unattended and the chair unflipped for 30 seconds. I come into the room and see our almost-2yo daughter handling the keyboard and the mouse like a pro. Despite never doing anything with a computer before. Toddlers are truly keen observers. You think they're just trying to smash a toy or eat their picture book, but they're constantly watching everything. In the recent months I had a whole lot of stories that follow the pattern of "how in hell did you know these items belong together?!". There are moments when I wonder if toddlers have a secret worldwide community, and communicate with each other while parents are asleep... (Also our cat learned to use our daughter as a distraction sometimes, making her noisy so that we vacate the kitchen, while it runs in to snatch our dinner...)
- fileeditview 6y ago> (Also our cat learned to use our daughter as a distraction sometimes, making her noisy so that we vacate the kitchen, while it runs in to snatch our dinner...) That's some Garfield quality action right there!
- TeMPOraL 6y agoIn between all the worry and crying, life with a toddler is one rolling comedy show! I have to consciously stop myself from talking about it, because I realize it's super-boring to anyone who isn't a parent.
- fitchjo 6y agoI think I saw a documentary about that once... ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP5kcUhMK1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP5kcUhMK1I
- 6y ago
- EdwardDiego 6y agoReminds me of the time my 2 year old daughter sent my lawyer a bunch of kissy face emojis. I think my lawyer believed me that it wasn't actually me...
- matsemann 6y agoJust after lockdown, our boss sent an important message in our general chat, tagging everyone with @channel. While reading the message one of my cats jumped on my keyboard and managed to spam '+enter maybe fifty times to all 400+ currently reading the channel in a few seconds. Don't think Slack has any kind of rate limiting..? It was also impossible for me to delete the messages, as they jumped up and down when people started reacting, making me misclick loads of times. It was funny. https://i.imgur.com/Sznqb4t.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Sznqb4t.jpg
- gnrlst 6y agoJudging by the amount of Cat emoji reactions, I would go as far as saying your cat is a regular on that Slack channel :)
- jrootabega 6y agoChanging the send action to Ctrl-Enter (or maybe it was Shift-Enter?) helps with this. It also helps prevent accidental yubikey posts and is good for when you need to write up multiline posts. Just saying in case anyone wasn't already aware.
- jSully24 6y agoThanks for the tip. I wonder how many unfinished messages I’ll send before my muscle memory remembers I’ve switched?
- jrootabega 6y agoHeh, yeah, I had a funny story about this:
- kamyarg 6y agoI enabled a delay for gmail that from the moment I click send I have 10s to cancel the email and it let's me edit it. Has been very useful so far.
- kebman 6y ago
- mabbo 6y agoYou would think that Strategic Command would be the experts on two-person approvals to avoid accidents.
- nullserver 6y agohttps://www.cnn.com/2018/01/23/us/hawaii-governor-password-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/23/us/hawaii-governor-password-t...
- flohofwoe 6y agoThis actually highlights one of my griefs with the twitter webclient: hotkeys without modifiers keys. E.g. on twitter.com, "n" opens the popup to create a new tweet. I'm not sure if there are valid accessibility reasons for this (in this case, all is fine), but at least I found this behaviour more annoying than useful.
- gostsamo 6y agoIt is not due to accessibility as far as I know. It might be useful for people with bad hand mobility, but it is annoying for screen reader users, because SR-s have different input modes and this works in only one of them.
- kevincox 6y agoI find this incredibly useful. Why do I want to stretch my fingers to hit Alt or whatever when I can just hit "n"? I don't often have things randomly pressing things on my keyboard to cause issues.
- saagarjha 6y agoHow often do you tweet?!
- jrootabega 6y agoI once accidentally triggered a yubikey HOTP into youtube, which has hotkeys like this. It didn't do anything crazy, but it did do some funny stuff (that I don't remember anymore.)
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoSimilar if you think you've focused the search box in Thunderbird, and then spend the next 5 minutes trying to figure out what actions the word you typed before realizing your mistake did, and how to undo them.
- ultrasuperstar 6y agorevealing critical password and blaming your child, classic, fantastic
- boomboomsubban 6y agoThe lack of a number or upper case letter means that it'd basically need to be an internal password, meaning US Strategic Command has some terrible security. I wish that made me think it was unlikely.
- ultrasuperstar 6y agoI'm over 100% confident that it is a password (a really sad one ofc). But that twitter just took focus when the child got to the keyboard. The child then typing without space or weird alt/ctrg/shift inputs and then press send. Under 0% probability. TL:DR twitter took focus when he typed the password and enter did send it. Everyone knows it.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoEnter is new line on Twitter, and it takes like six hits of shift to get to tweet. Just tested it, but I have no idea if the screenshot would show if a third party client was used.
- ultrasuperstar 6y agonvm then, i don't use twitter, only irssi on gentoo, take a look at some footage of my workplace: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gosChU94UCc&list=UUxt6g0bywtxqoCv0aJCIbsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gosChU94UCc&list=UUxt6g0bywt...
- foobarian 6y agoReminds me of Molly guards. I would dearly love to track down who it originated from! Internet lore stops at referencing a programmer whose young daughter Molly kept pressing the on/off button. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/molly-guard.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/molly-guard.html
- nullserver 6y agoAges ago, at a Big Data center. They stopped take your kid to work day for IT department. Apparently large bright red button and 3 year olds don’t mix. Much fun was not had.
- arethuza 6y agoA long long time (~30 years) ago I was at a customer site and the meeting room I was in had a huge server sitting in the corner. It had a design that looked like it had a door on the front (like some Suns) with a button to unlock. I was left by myself for a bit and went across to look at the server and open the door - only after I pressed the button did I realise that it was the on/off switch rather than a door open. I hastily switched it back on and made it back to my seat before before anyone came to the room to check what had happened to their server!
- chasd00 6y agoI remember a story about someone pushing TheBigRedButton but realized what they had done before releasing it. The poor soul had to stand there and not release the button while others were scrambling to get the system into a state where it could lose power safely. Edit: this is back when on/off really meant on or off with respect to power :)
- aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 6y agoSpeaking of sheer curiosity and poor impulse control: during the big Dotcom bubble, the startup where I worked suddenly had its servers taken offline when there was an unscheduled power outage at the colo facility. Apparently two dimwits from another tenant were onsite tending to their rack when they saw the big red buttons on the wall spaced ten feet apart, and wondered what they would do when you held them down simultaneously. Turns out, they did precisely what the not-so-little signs said they would.
- Reason077 6y agoThis seems the modern equivalent of a “numbers station”. Sending an encoded message to an embedded asset somewhere in the world. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station
- ghthor 6y agoThat's what I think it is. If you throw it in a cryptogram solver you can get, "Q Acquitted".
- karlerss 6y agoAt our workplace it is standard & strictly enforced (called out) policy to lock your screen before leaving your computer unattended. For me this has become an automatic action. I think USSTRATCOM could benefit from the same policy.
- eCa 6y agoWe have the same policy, but I must confess to not follow it when working from home. On the other hand, I live alone and all entrances to my home are always locked. On the third hand, having a very young child anywhere near my work computer unsupervised would be the stuff of nightmares..
- nullserver 6y agoThey are very fast if you walk away for a second. Smashing keyboard is great fun. One of my kids new favorite thing is to sneak into office and stay hidden. Usually I notice right away, but not always.
- DanBC 6y agoYes, but this is human factors, isn't it? Logging out and back in has friction. It's natural that people will do it [EDIT will not log out or lock when needed]. We need a lower friction method to log off and in again, or to at least lock the computer for a few minutes.
- zrail 6y agoOn macOS I have a hot corner set to lock the screen and I use Touch ID to log back in. It’s basically seamless.
- nullserver 6y agoTouch ID is disabled via corporate policy. Locking the screen would result in many minutes of reconnecting to VPNs and setting up sessions.
- everly 6y agoI didn’t realize FOIA requests were ever turned around so quickly (though I assume this isn’t the norm)
- boomboomsubban 6y agoLegally they have to reply in 20 days, though that's not exactly well enforced. One day is still quick, they were likely looking for a good outlet to announce what happened.
- Spooky23 6y agoIt happens more than you might think. If it’s a request without privilege risk, workloads aren’t crazy and the requestor writes them well, same day service happens. Writing these things is like a grant, there’s an art.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoIn this case, they sent a "press statement" response instead of a "FOIA response". The FOIA response would have been just the "there are no written records" part plus the boilerplate. They realized that this is a press story about to blow up, and that if they don't make a statement the press will just write "USSTRATCOM TWEET RAISES HACKING FEARS. WERE WE ONE KEYSTROKE AWAY FROM GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR?" with a "We contacted USSTRATCOM but did not receive a response [in the 3 minutes between asking and posting]" so they made a statement.
- squarefoot 6y agoIf I was Twitter manager for the US Strategic Command, my screen would lock 1 second after my ass leaves the chair.
- frankbreetz 6y agoIt's just a Twitter account. He/She might not even have a security clearence.
- acdha 6y agoI think there’s a pretty good argument for that being the case, since they’re exposed to the public but you can’t phish what someone doesn’t have access to and it’s really hard to accidentally reference something classified if you don’t know it. The government usually doesn’t shy away from a bit of overhead to have firm separation between classified and unclassified systems.
- anoncake 6y agoOr just "They", which is both shorter and actually gender-neutral.
- frankbreetz 6y agoIsn't "they" plural? It's just one person. "it" is actually gender-neutral, singular, and even shorter, but feels like it should only be used for objects and not people. Turns out it's a "he", so if we are focused on technicalities I should have used that, but for some reason I can't edit the comment.
- anoncake 6y ago"They" has been used as singular for centuries.
- mindwok 6y agoThere are probably security implications of this, but all said I like it. It reminds me we're all human, even the agency in charge of nukes.
- cm2187 6y agoBeware of young children... and facetious colleagues. Have been the victim and perpetrator a few times. My favorite was to change the screen saver to a BSOD screenshot and watch the reaction of the colleague when he walks back to his desk.
- christophilus 6y agoMy colleague took a screenshot of my desktop, then made it full screen. Took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out why my computer was frozen.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoTrue story: I once did this[0] to a friend of mine (who at the time was also my boss) on his Ubuntu desktop. I later asked him about it since he never said anything. Turns out he just thought his Linux Desktop was being stupid again, used the control sequence bring up the terminal, and just did his work in there. [0] It was a little different. I set the screenshot as the background and hid everything and removed all panels and whatnot.
- christophilus 6y agoHeh heh. That is a very Linux story.
- DoubleGlazing 6y agoA broken screen image is another good one. To hear someone come back from break and start loudly asking "WTF?" will never not be funny.
- danso 6y agoDaily Dot article: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/gibberish-tweet-u-s-strategic-command-child/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/gibberish-tweet-u-s-strategic... Response in scribd PDF form: https://www.scribd.com/document/500831873/FOIA-U-S-Strategic-Command-response-to-l-gmlxzssaw-tweet https://www.scribd.com/document/500831873/FOIA-U-S-Strategic...
- 0x008 6y agoI love how the report says the child „took advantage“ of the situation
- globular-toast 6y ago"In a telework status". So, working from home? It annoys me when people use unnecessarily technical vocabulary.
- jaywalk 6y agoMakes them feel more important.
- williesleg 6y agoCovfefe
- rvz 6y agoIf this was the orange man, it would be declared as an international crisis with some foreign agent 'hacking' us again narrative spun from a cauldron of internet lies. Maybe those accounts should have a triple check password warning before they clumsily or have your child mistakenly tweet such things online. Unbelievable that Twitter still doesn't even have a check such as that for high profile accounts. Downvoters: So we should not have extra tweet checks for high profile accounts who may have children or others clumsily or mistakenly tweet gibberish or nonsense on Twitter especially from an account that is responsible to '...deter strategic attack and employ forces, as directed, to guarantee the security of our Nation and our Allies.' [0] Care to explain your reasons why for very important and verified official accounts part of the US Department of Defense or any other account that has a government-level responsibility 'thIs iS aLL coMPleTEly fINe'? [0] https://www.stratcom.mil/About https://www.stratcom.mil/About
- hanselot 6y agoUnfortunately, they already bought the narrative, while the actual message slips under real readers' noses. Lol, if they only knew. Edit: For those who can still see this. Try putting that tweet's content in here and see what's right at the top of the results. ;l;;gmlxzssaw http://rumkin.com/tools/cipher/cryptogram-solver.php http://rumkin.com/tools/cipher/cryptogram-solver.php
- jeffrallen 6y agoThat's my new password.
- junippor 6y agoWhy is this on HN?
- sto_hristo 6y agoIt's funny how serious twitter and facebook has become even for governments. In my location, highest order politicians use it as a channel to provide important declarations/news and the media cites those in serious tone. Shouldn't governments use their own web sites and services for all official communication?
- rvz 6y ago> Shouldn't governments use their own web sites and services for all official communication? Yes they should. Much more official than a 'Twitter account'.
- kube-system 6y agoIt's not like governments don't also have their own websites. This is just the 21st century version of governments communicating via newspaper, radio, and television.
- justin66 6y agoAnd there are those who say investigative journalism is dead.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoOMG they tweeted the launch codes! But joking aside, I doubt this was an actual password. Too many repeating characters and characters grouped close together. Like "ssaw" and that ";l;;". And no uppercase as some people have mentioned. Who mandates special characters but not uppercase or numbers? I've never seen a password policy doing that. Usually numbers and uppercase come first before specials are considered, due to regional keyboard differences that make special characters hard to find. Really sounds much more like a toddler at work to me like they say. And really, this is twitter. Not a serious government system. Even if it was a password, people sending tweets tend not to be the ones pushing red buttons. Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/932/ https://xkcd.com/932/