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Fox Hacks Fark
circletimessquare writes "Valleywag.com is reporting on a case of a hacker not covering his tracks. It seems that, via a targeted email, an admin at Fark.com downloaded a trojan, which was used to steal passwords for Fark servers. Notably, these activities were traced to an IP address in Memphis Tennessee, and to a Fox News new-media reporter. As to the veracity of the story, that is bolstered by the fact that the story was greenlit for the front page of Fark. Motive? That could range from Fark being a rumored Fox takeover target, to stealing source code for a competing Fox social networking site. If the story is true, laws have been broken, but perhaps not by the Fox News reporter: it's possible his computer was hacked as well. Whatever the truth, it's a very entertaining read, as it pushes a number of hot buttons."
Fox is an internet hate machine.
So, did this Phillips guy develop the trojan that stole the Fark passwords? Did this guy minor in CompSci?
So a news anchor has hacked Fark in an attempt to possibly steal source code for their own social networking site?
This apparently isn't your average local anchor.
Jim
RunFatBoy ( http://www.runfatboy.net/ ) - A workout plan for beginners.
Maybe fox can do a report on themselves now. Investigative journalism hits a new low. And I'm not quite sure the "it's for an article excuse will fly this time"
If the ongoing RIAA shenanigans have taught us nothing else, it's that IP does NOT equal personal Identity.
Wait, the fact that it was greenlit on Fark indicates that it is true?
This has been posted to Fark.com already and garnered almost 600 comments.
Can Slashdot.org do better?
I smell BS - probably a marketing campaign by Fark. How many technologically adept admins do you know that fall for such easy e-mail tricks? Nice try. Let's keep the "I have Fox" to the facts, not idiotic statements like this.
Fox News Reporter == Journalist?
Well, actually, even my own biased opinion wouldn't label most Fox employees as 'not journalists' - but everytime I consider the Fox news network as a whole, I just can't think of it as a news network.
Ryan Fenton
It's a Trap!
When you're done clearing your throat, mind telling us what the title of the story is?
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Why would Fox buy Fark? For starters, Fark gets a ton of traffic. They have a ton of paying subscribers.
They are probably not after the source code or anything that ridiculous. They are pulling the same stunt they did a few months back with Photobucket -- give them negative publicity and drive down the bidding prices (assuming Fark is on the market). If you recall, Photobucket sold for like 1/3 of the original price because MySpace -- owned by Fox -- broke the linkage between their servers and Photobucket. Dirty, but brilliant.
Too bad Fark didn't fall for it. Go get 'em Drew!!!
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine -- Robert C. Gallagher
Fox News Channel is an entirely different thing than a local Fox affiliate, even one that is owned by News Corp. The summary above should make that more clear.
Fox outfoxed by Fark when Fox's farked fark of Fark was farked.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
He just wanted a catchy on-air slogan for when he jumped back over to the local NBC affiliate.
"Darrell Phillips... HACK-tion News 5!"
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
This is the only article I've seen on the frontpage today that fits your description. I think you meant to post that remark on Digg....
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Wait, wasn't fox owned sky-tv or NDS caught facilitating piracy of Canal+'s satellite encryption cards?
Hmm. I wonder if fox people have ever changed that wikipedia entry...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NDS_Group
Absolutely... obviously the Wall Street Journal was just a stepping stone before moving on Fark for Rupert Murdock... someone should be asking what did Karl Rove know and when did he know it? Perhaps this is why he suddenly resigned.
Probably not a good idean to say that out loud three times quickly in front of the kids.
Undead Ed
Whereas you, I suppose, are the picture of objectivity?
If you find the articles and/or conversations here, you always have the option of, you know, not reading them.
And I thought there were nothing but bubble-headed fucktards over at Fox. Of course, doing anything of this nature (and getting caught at it) is still pretty fucktarded. So perhaps I can rest secure in my preconceived notions of those guys over there...
You know what is really fucktarded? Confusing Fox News with a local Fox TV station. One shows the Simpsons, one shows O'reilly. This was the Simpsons one.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Ten to one, we hear next week that some large repository of Student papers is vulnerable too.
Really... is there anything remarkable about the source code that runs sites like fark or slashdot. I hand-rolled my own similar aggregator in a few days and it's evident that the users make the community and not the software.
Short of collecting personal information, I can't see what value is there.
Come on. Who hasn't hacked fark?
Err... I mean... yeah... this is terrible. Terrible I tell you.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Fox Hacks Fark
Snark at 11
From the article, "Phillips also purchased, using PayPal, a paid subscription to TotalFark, a premium Fark service. The accounts all used the same IP addresses as the hacker." This makes it look a lot more like it was actually the individual. This is not just a case of the attack coming from an IP of a possibly compromised computer.
For it to be a different individual, someone would have had to compromise the PayPal account of Phillips without him noticing. I expect there would be a shocked response from Phillips if this had been the case. Instead, the website of Darrell Phillips seems to be blank today.
if the admins on fark are willing to link the story to the front page, then the story is probably true. fark would not link this to their front page and the story was unverified unless they were really really stupid. and who could verify it? well, howabout fark itself?
otherwise, fox could turn around and cry foul themselves, a smear campaign, perhaps libel, etc. if valleywag.com made this up or has a bad source, fark would not link to the story, and they would know better than anyone else
then there is the whole liberal bias thing: no. fark is not a liberal website #1, they are pretty even handed with the conservative and liberal spun links. and #2, even if fark were liberal, if you are going to smear someone, you don't stick your neck out in this way. you smear them in such a way that someone else's reputation is on the line. fark is putting it's own reputation on the line by questioning fox's reputation here. you don't want blowback here, which fark certainly would get if it got out the story was phony, and it would permanently diminish fark's good name (such as it is) if this was a phony story. thus the care involved in greenlighting the story or not
so it's a rare case of the story being about the news, and one of the players in the story being a news aggregator site. what that means is is that you have an added level of verification automatically involved right there that you would not otherwise have
however, in fox's defense, if you want to talk about smearing someone, i can think of no better devilish smear than hacking a fox news reporter's computer, and framing the guy as a hacker. brilliant
but in such a case, you would expect the reporter to immediately allay with fark in just as much anger, anger at getting framed, and demand from his cable provider comcast records of inbound ip connections to his computer in the time frame outbound connections to fark were discovered by fark. any sheepishness, avoidance, or reticence on the reporter's part would pretty much spell doom for the guy's reputation
and note that: the reporter's reputation. i don't at all think this is the work of news corp, rupert murdoch, or even the local fox tv station. if the reporter is guilty, he's obviously just a lone idiot, not part of some vast conservative conspiracy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I wonder if kdawson also posts articles when liberal hacktivism happens? Hmmm...
I put up an aggregator for a myself and a few other disaffected farkers and it was coded from scratch in about a day, and even to date has probably less than two man weeks of coding in it.
I'm not sure how you could be smart enough to set up a trojan to gather passwords but not either run your own OS forum or code one from scratch.
it's not rocket science
Ignoring the article is an option? I thought it was required!
You might mess with kdawson's "narrative"! Can't have that!
Fox farks Fark's fark.
Darl's SCOX sucks Cox
Google bungles YouTube's bundles
Global Greedy Gluttons Gleefully Grind Glaciers
I couldn't get anything to rhyme with "RIAA"
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Though while we're on the subject I think the guys over at Fox News are a bunch of bubbleheaded fucktards, too.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
everything on the face of the world turn their attention to things that are threat to their survival whenever such occurences come up, leaving what they were busy with at that moment for a while. likewise, slashdot and many other sites, institutes, foundations, civil organizations and even individuals have turned their attention to things that are threatening their existence and what they do and stand for - like erosion of civil rights, freedom, any liberty under the yoke of bush & co, and etc.
Read radical news here
The local news networks run by Fox Broadcasting stations are not directly affiliated with Fox News. Though certainly share content, the local affiliates are run by their local management. Their editorial and reporting staff are also controlled by local management (as can be seen in my home town where Fox's local coverage is surprisingly left leaning). I am certainly aware of how fashionable it is to bash Fox News Channel, but this was the rogue action of a local Memphis Fox Affiliate which maintains their own news aggregation web site called OnMemphis.com.
He'll get over it. /last post
I've always been a fan of your posts on k5, fark and here and would love to see you over on bannination.
"Hoooney, come upstairs for dinner! I made meatloaf..."
"Not now Mom, I'm CALLING PEOPLE FUCKTARDS ON THE INTERNET!!"
IF this guy is guilty (and he could be hacked and framed himself), i think it is certain the guy is just a lone idiot. the question being: why would fox hack fark? there's no valid reason for them to do that. but there is a valid reason for a new media reporter trying to build a social networking site!
having said that (that the hacking in question here most definitely is not representative of fox news), it is intellectually dishonest of you to draw distance between a local fox station and the national one in this case. they are all owned by rupert murdoch, darling, who has a pretty solid track record of seeding his media acquisitions with his particular conservative point of view
and, btw, there's nothing wrong rupert murdoch seeding his conservative point of view in his media acquisitions. it's a free country, and his media conglomerate has obviously done quite well financially by addressing a conservative fan base. good for him, good for fox news (local and national)
however, it is certainly disingenuous of you to think that distancing fox affiliates from each other is supposed to instill innoculation for fox (national) from implication for this hack
no, dummy, the proper way for you to innoculate fox from the implications of any wrongdoing here is to point out, compellingly and reasonably, that this is probably the actions of a lone idiot, not fox news (local) or fox news (national)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i'm trying to build my own news aggregator (stay tuned)
;-)
so either we can meet on the field of battle, or maybe even team up
cheers
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yeah, I'm sure an employee at a local Fox affiliate in Memphis, Tennessee doing something stupid is totally related to a vast buyout conspiracy by News Corp.
The real story here is that someone at Fark was stupid enough to open a trojan from an email attachment.
but it was an investigative news reporter, "hacking" fark in a bumbling manner. to such a character, interested in starting a social networking site, stealing source code might actually make more sense than rolling your own
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Where did Fark's BOOB section go?
Ave Molech Setting
Hmmmm, anybody remember this scenerio.
1. make a copy of a damning document (say something from your candidate for President's Air National Guard C.O. about not showing up for duty)
2. make said copy look like a forgery
3. secretly feed memo to big news anchor who reports about it,
4. publicly point out the memo is a forgery
5. Anchor (who is an enemy anyway) quits in disgrace
6. Everybody assumes (incorrectly) that the contents of the memo were false.
7. Candidate i inoculated against a charge or desertion.
8. Steal election!
is this
1. Hack into your competitors computers with one of your employee's (who is clearly not capable of pulling of such a hack) computer.
2. Get caught hacking.
3. publicly point out that said employee is not capable of such a hack.
4. become inoculated against charges of hacking.
Nah nobody is that devious.
I loved Fark - especially the funny headlines, and the memes - but I haven't been back to it since they changed the layout. Looks absolutely shite on a laptop screen. Blinding white. Adieu, Fark, adieu
Get your own free personal location tracker
Paypal would inform him right away if his account had been compromised. In fact, this happened to me and paypal informed me in an email; the email had a link to a website where I could enter my paypal password and fix the problem.
I'm not sure where all my money went though.
The Slashdot main banner on the front page says, "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." But the browser window title says, "News for nerds, stuff that matters." Make your minds up - is it a comma or full stop?
Your Honor, I didn't do it. I was hacked! Some kid in Russia broke into my computer and framed me for the hit.
Seriously, I don't have to worry about the RIAA/MPAA/BSA or any other law-abusing midgets. I can just plead Malware and get out of jail free.
The fun thing about this finger-pointing is that you can't prosecute one party without opening the floodgates for everyone else. Let's pretend the Fox PC was actually rooted and some kid in eastern Europe is to blame... if you prosecute the kid, then everyone will use the Malware defense. If you prosecute the Fox guy, then all the script kiddies will hide behind proxies and be forever shielded from American lawmakers. It's a lose-lose situation.
No matter the outcome, I'm quite happy with my (legally acquired) cluster of European servers and the beloved chain of squid proxies that run on them. I'm not worried about willfully committing a crime, I'm more worried about something perfectly legal today that could become some senator's grinding stone tomorrow.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
if. they. are. wrong. then. they. will. piss. off. fox.
seems to be quite the motivation to be right, doesn't it?
now, if FARK wanted to be right about a story about FARK, how could FARK check on whether or not a story ABOUT FARK is true or not?
hmmmm...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I heard this is a site for brainy nerds who are lots of smarts, we has them on Fark too, but at least there's pics of nice kittens and cool animated gifs too. You guys only talk and stuff. Doesn't that get boring?
Your dedication as an ideologue is impressive, and appropriate for a story involving Fox and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
That's right, just keep telling yourself Rupert Murdoch isn't in it for the money...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
just send me an email with your bank account, pin, mother's maiden name, social security number, etc., and i'll deposit it directly into your account
actually, to save time, just put all that info in a reply post right here
all the best
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Slashdot had better be on the lookout. Somebody might send CmdrTaco a trojan in an attempt to steal the Slashcode!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Maybe I'm missing something here, but why would Fox steal code from Fark for a social networking site when Rupert Murdoch owns the most popular and best known social networking site there is?
hello, i wrote that summary
...and, btw, there's nothing wrong with rupert murdoch seeding his conservative point of view in his media acquisitions. it's a free country, and his media conglomerate has obviously done quite well financially by addressing a conservative fan base. good for him, good for fox news (local and national)
it's not just an affiliate, it's not just getting house, 24, and the simpsons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHBQ-TV
it's owned by rupert murdoch. if you hadn't noticed, murdoch has a pretty solid track record of seeding his media acquisitions with his particular conservative point of view
however, it is certainly disingenuous of you to think that distancing fox affiliates from each other is supposed to instill innoculation for fox (national) from implication for this hack
no: the proper way for you to innoculate fox from the implications of any wrongdoing here is to point out, compellingly and reasonably, that this is probably the actions of a lone idiot, not fox news (local) or fox news (national)
IF this guy is guilty (and he could be hacked and framed himself), i think it is certain the guy is just a lone idiot. the question being: why would fox hack fark? there's no valid reason for them to do that. but there is a valid reason for a new media reporter trying to build a social networking site to do that
having said that (that the hacking in question here most definitely is not representative of fox news), it is intellectually dishonest of you to draw distance between a local fox station and the national one in this case as a defensive posture. they are all owned by rupert murdoch. maybe you just didn't know, but it sounds like you're spinning
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Fox F**ks Fark?
have you tried coherence lately?
you'll excuse me, but i have to go give my master in darkness dick cheney a blow job right now
saying that is about as valid a depiction of my ideological and political views as the words you just wrote above about me
so if anyone is going to incoherently smear by beliefs, i might as well do it myself
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What you don't know is that WHBQ Fox 13 is a local news affiliate, and not related to the Fox News Channel in any way. Generally these local news teams will resort to "extreme" or "Undercover" journalism in an attempt to grab viewers.
Damn memes. Keep flooding over to banniNation too!
for News Corp/News International
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6304177.stm
2) Do Fark admins not use basic anti-virus software?
3) The article is highly speculative, being based purely on circumstantial evidence regarding a possible motive, and is forced to use an ad hominem attack to support its conspiracy theory that Evil Overlord v2(tm) Rupert Murdoch is behind the break-in.
Ergo, unless and until any real investigatory groundwork is performed, and evidence presented, this will only serve to enable those less concerned with accuracy and fair play, and more concerned with bashing their adversaries in the media, to generate a FUD cloud. As most people don't read secondary sources, much less primary ones, the FUD cloud will be a success.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I totally quit going to Fark when the critical density of malicious idiots was reached (for my personal threshold). The only thing I miss is Caturdays.* So ordnarily, I don't reccomend Fark to people who don't know it already. In this case however, whoever modded you Troll is probably not malicious, but might want to go to Fark long enough so he understands what your post was about.
*If you think I'm fibbing, remember Foobies has been split off.
Now how do we get Slashdot to add a cat pics section?
Who is John Cabal?
We're still chipping away at the graphic design, but i'm very happy with the underlying code and how it's scaling.
I'm thinking the anonymous posting feature is probably one we shouldn't have implemented.
You'll get over it... eventually. Even I did, at least just barely enough to survive visiting it once or twice a day.
I seriously doubt it, because if this was pure BS cooked up by the Fark admins they would have to be absolute fools to assign blame to a person (Phillips.) If they didn't have pretty damning evidence then he would have pretty good grounds for a defamation lawsuit (and possibly might end up owning Fark. Literally, not in the "Owned" sense.)
But that's exactly it! If he wanted to put this out there honestly, why wouldn't Drew just make a FARK post? Why not just go straight to the FBI? They have a whole division devoted to this stuff. They could sort it out for him, and then he could post about it. He's made direct posts about much bigger stuff in the past. Why go through another site for something this huge?
ANSWER: Because it suits Drew a lot better to have an "interview" on another site to float the "complaint" that way. The worst thing that can happen in the case of a lawsuit is that he claims to have been misquoted.
This whole thing reeks of BS. REEKS. If Drew wants to sell his site to FOX (or anyone else who will buy it), that's fine, he's completely entitled. But don't fabricate a cover story to get mainstream media attention in order to do it.
they certainly aren't doing this to steal their crap source code.
it's a pretty far stretch to claim this is an act ordered by fox as well, people don't JUST do what their company orders they can have other motives you know.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
They did it for the epic lulz.
Fox is just ABC CBS NBC without as much pretension and leftish slant. I can't tell whether they are hated more for not sharing the bias of their critics or for letting the "Journalism" fig leaf slip. Either way, I would hate to be the guy charged with trying to figure out whether the trojan really came from Fox, or was a frameup from one of Fox's many enemies.
Fark hacked a Fox News Channel representatives computer. Through the FNC rep, Fark hacked the news anchor's computer. Then the news anchor's computer was used to hack Fark. This was done to make it appear as though the news anchor hacked Fark, only for it to be later shown that the anchor did not really hack Fark (because it was really the FNC hacker).
News Corporation is not so much about making money in the pure profit motive sense.
c hive/2003/02/17/337312/index.htm
If all the world's news, culture and rational media were a giant pool of milk and honey.. then News Corp would find a way to piss in it.
Oh, other possibly News Corp dirty tricks:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_ar
You're "permabanned". Not kidding or trolling. Like the other guy said, that isn't a bug or database error, that's a known behavior of the site for people who are given a non-expiring ban, although its frequency of occurrence seems slightly random (intentionally? who knows). It's intended to be a sort of speedbump to discourage you and make you go away.
The fake errors usually stop if you log out, and (barring a systemwide site crash) they always stop if you check the site from a fresh IP that isn't linked to your banned account, without logging in; you should give it a try.
That last point is very debatable. Certainly most small sites would love the several thousand paying subscribers Totalfark has, but if I'm not completely mistaken (sorry, no refs on hand), Fark's employees have said publicly that the subscription revenue is vanishingly small when set beside what they bring in from their (massive) ad revenue, hence their deferring to what "the advertisers want" on site policy, and being openly dismissive of issues that the subscribers complain about.
On consideration, I'm a little surprised Fark isn't adopting that code that blocks firefox/adblock, because their overall direction seems primarily determined by advertising at this point, for necessary financial reasons.
Like "Stix Nix Hick Flix?"
It's "intellectually dishonest" of you to describe someone's pointing out a simple fact as a defensive posture. One might think you were doing some defensive posturing of your own, but for what reason, I wonder? The poster's not calling you names nor drawing any adverse conclusions about your elision, just bringing it forth as an FYI.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Well, I guess there's a first time for everything. Like seeing thins o_0
Not MySpace crappy, but hey go have a look at that cess-pool of pedonazis over at dailykos.com -- those guys know how to make a forum.
Fark has some serious bugs, some content in forum submissions just hang in the air. Remove a word randomly and it goes through. Last time I checked there was no automated procedure for recovering a password. No threading etc.
In these days and age of open-source CMS system, the "stealing the source code" is the most astonishingly stupid possible motive here. Kind of like when they charged K. Mitnick of "stealing" SunOS's source-code -- now available to anyone from sun.com, free of charge.
Absolutely... obviously the Wall Street Journal was just a stepping stone before moving on Fark for Rupert Murdock.
MurdocH is this guy. MurdocK is this guy.
It's okay; I get confused by that, too.