4 ms·

Guess he should have bought a VPN with cash or stole someone else’s if Mr. Sharp wanted to be more sharp about it.

trhway 5y ago
>SHARP falsely stated, in part and substance, that someone else must have used his PayPal account to make the purchase. and to me it looks like somebody intentionally left breadcrumb trail leading to the guy. With cloud paying so nice these days nobody is going to risk that way for the paltry $2M (ie. less than 3-4 years earnings in Bay Area for the people like this). It looks like the stock price drop is the real "follow the money" trailhead, and that doesn't lead to the guy. And given that it were about Ubiquiti customer databases - the value of [stealth] access to those customers may possibly dwarf those few billions of valuation drop - so even the stock drop may have been a smoke screen. I mean Ubiquiti as a target reminds me of SolarWinds. Those comments back then is also interestingly predictive https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26692987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26692987 - having a fall back guy kind of absolves the company from architectural and operational sins which allowed the hack and pacifies the customers who otherwise would feel unease of being possibly hacked by somebody serious.
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  Yes your point is valid. It doesn’t seem that they did find any unusual shorting activity though as is or used to be how they went about it in the old days.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Hamuko 5y ago
  Are you saying that someone purchased a VPN account using his PayPal account and by sheer coincidence, while that said VPN account was in middle of data exfiltration, his home IP address also connected to said servers with no connection to the exfiltration?
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    I mean... That is what someone who's setting up a patsy would do if they could. Home networks are not exactly Fort Knox, are they? I had a bunch of rogue connections banging around trying to brute-force database logins within my home LAN earlier this year. I imagine they could have made a connection to a server look like it originated from within my LAN, and if I wasn't watching a live feed of my database connection logs at the time I never would have noticed.
    - Thorrez 5y ago
      Why, after he realized his own PayPal account had been hacked and used to hack his own company, would he then become a whistleblower and accuse his company of not investigating the hack? He should have been spending his time finding out how his PayPal account and home network got hacked, not talking to journalists accusing the company of not handling the hack correctly.
    - 542354234235 5y ago
      This seems like a series of unfalsifiable claims. Taking evidence linking him to the crime and saying “That is what someone who's setting up a patsy would do” pretty much means anything and everything becomes “proof” of the conspiracy.
      - trhway 5y ago
        > evidence linking him to the crime keyword is "evidence". Whenever a sympathetic person/cause becomes a target of IP-address based evidence HN is overflowing with posts that IP-address isn't an evidence :)
        542354234235 5y ago
        It wasn’t IP-address based evidence. It was a chain of evidence. His Paypal account being used to purchase a VPN. That same VPN being used to access the servers with close-hold, high level credentials. His home IP being associated with the VPN after a power outage at his house. So, we have electric grid evidence that matches up with IP evidence, that matches up with Paypal account evidence. I’m not saying he is guilty or innocent, but lets not misrepresent what is being discussed. I’m saying that responding to chains of evidence by claiming that is what someone setting up a patsy would do, is a unfalsifiable conspiracy theory.

>SHARP falsely stated, in part and substance, that someone else must have used his PayPal account to make the purchase. and to me it looks like somebody intentionally left breadcrumb trail leading to the guy. With cloud paying so nice these days nobody is going to risk that way for the paltry $2M (ie. less than 3-4 years earnings in Bay Area for the people like this). It looks like the stock price drop is the real "follow the money" trailhead, and that doesn't lead to the guy. And given that it were about Ubiquiti customer databases - the value of [stealth] access to those customers may possibly dwarf those few billions of valuation drop - so even the stock drop may have been a smoke screen. I mean Ubiquiti as a target reminds me of SolarWinds. Those comments back then is also interestingly predictive https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26692987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26692987 - having a fall back guy kind of absolves the company from architectural and operational sins which allowed the hack and pacifies the customers who otherwise would feel unease of being possibly hacked by somebody serious.

1cvmask 5y ago
Yes your point is valid. It doesn’t seem that they did find any unusual shorting activity though as is or used to be how they went about it in the old days.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Hamuko 5y ago
Are you saying that someone purchased a VPN account using his PayPal account and by sheer coincidence, while that said VPN account was in middle of data exfiltration, his home IP address also connected to said servers with no connection to the exfiltration?
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  I mean... That is what someone who's setting up a patsy would do if they could. Home networks are not exactly Fort Knox, are they? I had a bunch of rogue connections banging around trying to brute-force database logins within my home LAN earlier this year. I imagine they could have made a connection to a server look like it originated from within my LAN, and if I wasn't watching a live feed of my database connection logs at the time I never would have noticed.
  - Thorrez 5y ago
    Why, after he realized his own PayPal account had been hacked and used to hack his own company, would he then become a whistleblower and accuse his company of not investigating the hack? He should have been spending his time finding out how his PayPal account and home network got hacked, not talking to journalists accusing the company of not handling the hack correctly.
  - 542354234235 5y ago
    This seems like a series of unfalsifiable claims. Taking evidence linking him to the crime and saying “That is what someone who's setting up a patsy would do” pretty much means anything and everything becomes “proof” of the conspiracy.
    - trhway 5y ago
      > evidence linking him to the crime keyword is "evidence". Whenever a sympathetic person/cause becomes a target of IP-address based evidence HN is overflowing with posts that IP-address isn't an evidence :)
      - 542354234235 5y ago
        It wasn’t IP-address based evidence. It was a chain of evidence. His Paypal account being used to purchase a VPN. That same VPN being used to access the servers with close-hold, high level credentials. His home IP being associated with the VPN after a power outage at his house. So, we have electric grid evidence that matches up with IP evidence, that matches up with Paypal account evidence. I’m not saying he is guilty or innocent, but lets not misrepresent what is being discussed. I’m saying that responding to chains of evidence by claiming that is what someone setting up a patsy would do, is a unfalsifiable conspiracy theory.