Fox News' FTP Password Anyone?

An anonymous reader writes "While browsing around the Fox News website, I found that directory indexes are turned on. So, I started following the tree up, until I got to /admin. Eventually, I found my way into /admin/xml_parser/zdnet/, in which, there is a shell script. Seeing as it's a shell script, and I use Linux, I took a peek. Inside, is a username and password to an FTP. So, of course, I tried to login. The result? Epic fail on Fox's part. And seriously, what kind of password is T1me Out. This is just pathetic." It's already been changed of course, but that's still pretty amusing.

Comments

Wasted chance

[Mark_in_Brazil]

Dude, why didn't you look around for the bug that makes them misreport the news so horribly that a majority of FOX News viewers still believes Iraq was responsible for 9/11 and Saddam had WMDs when the US invaded?

Re:Wasted chance

[niceone]

Hey, that's not a bug - it's a feature.

Re:Wasted chance

[include($dysmas)]

the usual call to RTFA ... this is from the lame "the DoD are after me for using vista" site, who approved it ffs? read the article they link to (and link directly next time, stop paying them in ads!), its an account to grab files from zdnet, not an account into fox news, does it even have write access? dont let the facts get in the way of alarmist bs tho

Re:Wasted chance

[dcollins]

This isn't about believing in WMDs before the invasion. This is about believing that we found WMDs AFTER the invasion. In an October 2003 poll, for example, 7 months after the invasion, 33% of Fox viewers said that the U.S. had actually physically found WMDs in the course of the invasion. That's 10% higher than the next most confused media viewership. This is what some of us would really love to see explained by you "nothing to see here" apologists. Or else, it sounds like you still maintain that's a reasonable belief today?

http://www.americanassembler.com/issues/media/docs /Media_10_02_03_Report.pdf

Weapons of Mass Destruction
As discussed, when respondents were asked whether the US has "found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" since the war had ended, 22% of all respondents over June-September mistakenly thought this had happened. Once again, Fox viewers were the highest with 33% having this belief. A lower 19-23% of viewers who watch ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN had the perception that the US has found WMD. Seventeen percent of those who primarily get their news from print sources had the misperception, while only 11% of those who watch PBS or listen to NPR had it.

Re:Wasted chance

[Anonymous Coward]

they can get ton's of free publicity

Now, is that "ton is of free publicity", or does Mr. Ton have a lot of "of free publicity" that he could potentially give to you?

Re:Wasted chance

[jollyreaper]

Fox news definately has some perspective issues - but WMD's isn't one of them. Even CLINTON believed they were there. Not trying to start a war - I am just sick of hearing about WMD's, when we all thought they were there. Iraq as the cause for 9/11 though - that's a crazy concept. No, you colossal boob, not everyone thought there were WMD's. First, don't lump chemical and biological with nuclear. Yes, I know analysts do it but I think it unfairly magnifies the threat level of the BC in NBC.

The specific charge Bush used to get our panties in a wad was nuclear weapons. "We don't want the smoking gun to be in the form of a mushroom cloud." Yellow cake uranium, lie. Aluminum tubes, lie. The CIA was giving Bush solid intel but he and his team refused to accept it. Cheney and his cronies cherry-picked raw intel for the most sensationalistic shit they could find, regardless of whether it was true or not.

When you say "most people assumed Saddam had WMD" you really mean "Most people assumed he had some leftover chemical or biological shit", not that he had nukes ready to strike the west in 45 minutes. The consensus before 9-11, a consensus backed by Powell, was that the US policy of Iraqi containment was working.

I'm sick of lies and lying liars. I'm sick of people who rewrite the facts to justify doing something and then rewrite history to protect themselves from that fuckup.

Re:Wasted chance

[smitth1276]

We did find WMDs on multiple occassions... they were pretty much all small caches of old shells filled with mustard or sarin and which were probably were no longer effective, but it is a bit disingenuous for the pollster to take those answers and then arbitrarily say "oh, well those don't count... so Fox News viewers are dumb!". If the question was simply "Has the US found Iraqi WMDs?" then the Fox News viewers appear to be the only ones who were properly informed of those developments.

And, of course, there were also incidents where the insurgent groups got ahold of some lingering chemical weapons (mustard gas, I think) and tried to make bombs out of them--luckily, that also was old and non-effective. Those were widely reported at the time.

In other words, get off your uninformed, sanctimonious high-horse. :-)

Re:Wasted chance

[Adambomb]

I minor detail, but the 9/11 hijackers were not shiite muslims. This is one question I wish was asked more often, despite knowing the answer, is why Saudi Arabia has been untouched by agression when the largest percentage of the hijackers were Saudi. In fact the hijackers were ALL from countries with which the oil companies...er....the US is friendly with (with Egypt being the longest stretch by that definition), primarily Saudia Arabia and the UAE.

Has anyone looked at the development of Dubai over the past 10 years? or the wealth of the royal family in Saudi Arabia? Money is flowing to someone from somewhere over there that is for sure.

Now I'm not saying that Saudi's or UAE citizens are evil by default, simply that there has been absolutely 0 backlash against these regions while the US uses 9/11 to justify everything else it has been doing everywhere else.

Wheres the puzzled slightly-tilted looks of hwhaaa?

HaHa

[Anonymous Coward]

You're going to jail and slashdot is getting shut down. It's a federal offense to interfere with an official government propaganda outlet.

Nice...

[x3rc3s]

Enjoy your stay in gitmo!

Changed by whom?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now the question is, was it changed by Fox or someone else.

Great all we need.

[forgotten_my_nick]

That is all we need, months of stories how "evil hackers got into Fox network"

Followed up with "Hackers: Evil and must be stopped?" to linking hacking to Obama, a danger to your kids and finally Hackers gone wild at Spring break.

what's wrong with T1me Out

[wheretheicegrows]

I'm not that much into security, so I hope I don't sound "pathetic", but I was wondering what's wrong with the 'T1me Out' password. I'd say all company passwords I've ever had were no harder than that, and none of them had a space in it. And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[AlHunt]

>And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?

Great - now I have to go change all my passwords.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[ndixon]

There's nothing really wrong with the password (though a smart dictionary-based search could discover it).

There is something very wrong with writing the password down, in plain text, on a public-facing server and assuming that no-one will be able to see it.

Re:what's wrong with T1me Out

[jollyreaper]

>>And honestly how many of you guys use a password like YwMCU07D?

>Great - now I have to go change all my passwords.

Don't feel bad, I had the same combination on my luggage.

Ridiculous summary

[the computer guy nex]

1) The password has probably been around for awhile with no one guessing it. What exactly was wrong with it? Uppercase/lowercase/numbers, combination of multiple words, it is at least moderately strong.

2) Why the hell are you blaming Fox? You think the entire company sat in a conference room and decided on a security scheme and a password?

3) Why did this deserve front page news? Exploits like this are found on a daily basis, and ones much more humorous/interesting/newsworthy.