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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."
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.
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
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.
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 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
I've always been a fan of your posts on k5, fark and here and would love to see you over on bannination.
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
Where did Fark's BOOB section go?
Ave Molech Setting
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.
Not 100% sure about Murdoch, but Roger Ailes certainly qualifies as your typical douchebag conservative. But back to Murdoch, I find it difficult to believe that money is an overriding concern once you reach a certain level. When you have a few billion dollars, what difference does a few billion more make, besides allowing you to buy (political) power? And given that his is a media empire, that's a lot of power.