Slashdot Mirror
Obama's Twitter Account "Hacked"
Oxford_Comma_Lover writes "A 24-year-old living with his mother in France was arrested for 'hacking' into Obama's twitter accounts. (Warning: WSJ does obnoxious paywall things. Your miles may vary.) Apparently he guesses the answer to a question related to password recovery in order to break into the accounts of famous people; he has no computer science training or financial motive. He posted screenshots to a few boards and twitter found out within a few hours, either from a tip or from noticing when someone from France logs onto twitter as the President of the United States. (He did not actually tweet as POTUS, but just wanted to show he could break into the account.)"
Apparently he guesses the answer to a question related to password recovery in order to break into the accounts of famous people
If thats all it takes then the system is broken, not the people abusing it.
I heard was "Let them eat cake"
They have basements in France?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
They laughed it off when Palin was hacked...Will they laugh now for the POTUS?
Maybe "I am the great cornholio!"
is always the human being.
"Who modded this informative? Whoever it is must've been smokin' some of that martian pot!"
Well of course Marcel Marceau didn't tweet as POTUS.
To hell with the French and their weird-ass language (damn french words).
Having a password clearly dictates the intent of the person is not to allow other people to use it.
If a door is locked, then people know they shouldn't enter and kicking in the door would be a crime... or at least very rude.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Now is when they offer him a job (as the movies would have you believe).
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
What important data is stored within that Twitter account? What crucial lines of communication flow through it?
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
q: "what city were you born in?"
a:"honolulu"
incorrect
a:"oahu"
incorrect
a:"kandahar"
correct
q: "what is your political affiliation?"
a:"democrat"
incorrect
a:"centrist"
incorrect
a:"fascist"
correct
q:"what is your favorite catchphrase?"
a:"yes we can"
incorrect
a:"change we can believe in"
incorrect
a:"from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs"
correct
(i love obama and i'm 100% for common sense healthcare reform... i need to make this qualification because some tea party morons out there might actually take my joke seriously)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Wouldn't it be fairly trivial to fake those screenshots?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Identifying weak links in the system is irrelevent as an excuse. That is what the secret service is for. This is one twitter account you should not mess with. Common sense did not prevail here. If he does get prosecuted I will not feel sorry for him. Law of Darwin should take effect. He was not smart enough to make it in society. I mean how stupid/arrogant do you have to be to mess with the POTUS? And the besides what the OP/TFA says, This should not be considered hacking. Unless you want to equate me hyjacking your car by finding the keys hidden in the glovebox.
is all he should get. Perhaps he should be rewarded, he was given the twitter account of the POTUS and he didn't even do anything with it. Now yes, the law says blah blah blah, however, this guy was just curious. He wanted to challenge himself. This country needs more people who are interested in more than American Idol and repeating the mantra "yes we can." blah blah blah, blah blah. Curiosity is what science is all about, it's how progress is made, etc.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
just because you guessed a password does not mean you 'hacked' into anything.
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
I don't even see how this can be dignified as "hacking" -- it's not even "script kiddy" in its complexity. If this weren't the President then I doubt it would even be news at all. But is the account even actually Obama's in the sense of, he actually takes the time to post on it himself? Doesn't he have a country to run or something?
A 24-year-old living with his mother...
I take offense to that!
Way too much! Let me also suppose the poor guy will get sued and maybe jailed for what he did. The thing I wonder is what will happen if my Twitter account was """"""hacked"""""" like this? Will it deserve a story in Slashdot?
My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
Is what is my favorite sports team...
That I'm posting on Slashdot should tell you how legit my answer is.
This is why I type a huge string of random gibberish into those stupid "Password Recovery" sections that ask me questions that any person that does any amount of research into my life can figure out.
Those things are stupid and the fact that so many sites still use them is completely stupid.
Why even include anything that relates to your mothers name? Why even give attackers that much? Just provide a 30 character string of random characters. It's not like anyone actually checks that your mom isn't named 'DFER%$^YBNSwerwer4r67786^##$%#%GFH'...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
that if you transgress against someone else, you are the problem
for example: if a bag of cash is sitting wide open and unguarded just inside an open door, you have absolutely 0% right to take it, and you are 100% to blame for the theft: YOU took it, no one told you to. your own poor decision making is the key
no matter how horrible or nonexistent someone's defenses, when you transgress against them, you are a criminal, you are 100% culpable, you have no excuse, you should be punished, and your morality sucks. plain and simple
sure, people SHOULD have good defenses. mainly because of all the immoral assholes out there. but even that you knew there were a lot of immoral assholes out there and their behavior is pretty predictable, none of that excuses the actual immoral assholes and their behavior. but another way: stupid is bad, but evil is always worse
so you need good defenses, but when you are transgressed against, the question of the quality of your defenses is completely besides the point: the immoral asshole needs to be punished
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The details of the case are all over the French press.
The kid guessed the password from the 2 twitter questions:
Non-American place of birth?
Everywhere
Nuclear launch code?
12345
Apparently they've know about the breach for months, but were waiting for the strategic command to change the password on all those missiles.
This kid has no idea of the damage he has done.
I'm a little confused how this guy's "hack" worked as described. I just checked Twitter and it doesn't have password recovery questions. And the "forgot password" form offers to send a password reset link to the email address associated with the account, so it's not going to be a way in unless you have access to the email too.
(i love obama and i'm 100% for common sense healthcare reform... i need to make this qualification because some tea party morons out there might actually take my joke seriously)
thanks to your comment, a revision is in order:
(i love obama and i'm 100% for common sense healthcare reform... i need to make this qualification because some t^He^Ha^H p^Ha^Hr^Ht^Hy^H morons who comment without reading out there might actually take my joke seriously)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
POTUS: cher @Canada, nous avons assez de vos dérision les bombardiers voler à midi.
Everyone already knows that question based security is not safe.
The news here is that the POTUS is not following basic security measures to keeps his accounts safe.
Which he really should be.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
If my lock at my door is poor, I may have problem getting money back from the insurance, but for the law, you entering my home it by using a replacement key wills till be considered "breaking and infringing upon my property". It isn't different here.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
After he got access he should have used Twitter to declare war on Vatican City.
Size: 0.17 sq. mi. (0.44 sq. km)
Population: 783 (2005 census)
Location: Rome, Italy
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Unless an electronic communication is PGP signed it should never be trusted so use of Twitter by all Twits, especially POTUS, is ridiculous as it is completely insecure and unverifiable.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
the only hate I see is from you and the poster you replied too, who are evidently predisposed to a certain belief.
I am not sure what is worse, that you think this way or that you both got rated insightful. I am really beginning to belief the most bile spewing people are on the left. Hate is what you make of it. I guess you can justify it by presenting yourself somehow as superior
Consider Kevin Mitnik. He was truly a technological wiz. But according to his books, a majority of "hacks" were non-technical. I see the above case as just another social engineering exploit.
To address some of the above comments: Just becuase the victim or even twitter itself made it easy to gain access, that does not make it legal and the offender should be prosecuted. That being said, I personally often do not provide real answers to password recovery questions, because none of the questions available are difficult enough. And if I can pick my own question, I typically just provide a hint for the actual password that only I would understand.
of a tea party enthusiast is an act of charity
as for underestimating the intelligence of a tea party enthusiast: is that possible?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
True hacking. Just to see if it can be done; not to do anything malicious. Even though it ranks low on the evolutionary scale as far as hacking is concerned, good work, kid :)
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
pre$ident
He did not actually tweet as POTUS, but just wanted to show he could break into the account.
Unrealized Tweet: Yes I can.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
i'm attacking the concept that the victim is to blame for a transgression, which is demonstrated in the grandfather comment in this thread
for example: she was drunk and skimpily dressed, so she deserved to be raped. he had no antivirus, so he deserved the trojan keylogger, etc. yes: you can take, or fail to take, certain actions which increase your chance of falling victim to immoral assholes. however, the immoral assholes are always to blame, regardless
as soon as you lose personal accountability, as soon as you start blaming victims, situations, or other obfuscations, you lose all morality. you are responsible for making poor choices in your life. and when you do, there will be consequences, no matter how much you whine "the devil made me do it", and age-old variations thereof
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Just stop this false dichotomy. Let me quote some excerpts from several posts above...
Yes, blame the victim. You didn't install triple deadbolts on your door.
Having a security question that is easily guessable is like leaving your car door unlocked.
I don't see why the fact that it is a computer system means that there is suddenly nothing wrong with the actions of the person deliberately breaking in.
If a door is locked, then people know they shouldn't enter and kicking in the door would be a crime.
We keep arguing over whose fault it is when someone breaks in. The reality is that all of the above points are right, and sometimes it can be both people's fault. There's nothing wrong with assigning blame to both parties.
If someone breaks into another person's home, car, twitter account, bank account - that person is to blame for it. But if the person secured their home, car, twitter account, or bank account with a post-it note that said "Don't enter here unless you know my mother's maiden name" then they are also to blame. And if someone designs a system where that is the only way to secure it, then they are also to blame.
The reality here is that people will always try to break into things. So it is the other two who have the responsibility to fix the problem: the end-user must demand better security, and the engineers must supply it.
Am I missing something? How does simply answering the security question get you a password? Doesn't it email the password to your account, or does Twitter really just divulge the password as soon as you guess the name of Obama's favorite food?
TOR
His security question should have asked where he was born. A huge portion of the population of the US still can't figure that out :)
considering the fact that
1. vitriolic hatred is pretty much all of the tea party consists of,
2. sound fiscal responsibility is finally what this health reform delivers,
3. health care security is unconstitutional only in creative crackpot legal arguments,
4. and free market principles do not answer every question in life (as the 2008 meltdown demonstrates: you need strong government regulation to keep the markets healthy)
a capitalist society with social safety nets is clearly and obviously superior in every measurement to the social darwinism i hear you advocating, even if you don't realize that is what you are advocating. free market fundamentalism died in 2008, i guess you didn't get the memo
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In cases where a website's "security" question is required of me, I often use an ANAGRAM or more often spell the answer BACKWARDS.
In case anyone wasn't convinced already, this shows that security questions are a bad idea. Simply stated, they introduce more points of failure into the system, and it's the weakest one that determines how easy the system is to defeat. In short, you can not make the system more secure by providing another way to gain entry.
Of course, security isn't only about keeping the bad guys out, but also about letting the good guys in. I guess that is what gave rise to security questions: to give you a way to gain entry if you forgot your passphrase. But even then, I don't see security questions as a good solution. I like the established method of "provide what authentication credentials you do have, and we'll send you a new passphrase by a method we agreed on earlier" better.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Given that Barack Obama is a spammer (see below), I don't object to his on-line presence being hacked. Maybe, it is illegal, but I wish the prosecution to be as lenient, as that of the certain Black Panthers was...
Yes, he is a spammer, because I am receiving e-mails from him — without ever asking to be subscribed, much less having gone through the double opt-in, the only responsible method of adding subscribers to a mailing list:
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
...to the kid that "hacked" (and I use that term loosely) into Gov. Palin's Yahoo email accounts? Was he ever convicted? He was a domestic offender, this is a foreign offender, but seems fairly similar to me...
Also, as President, all communication is supposed to be archived, is the Gov't archiving all of them?
Ken
because he represents badly needed progress for my country
me and the rest of the more level-headed and more lucid and clearly much larger majority in this country will drag the fringe minority of howling morons on the right into the 21st century, and up to the obvious and uncontroversial (unless you are a moron) standards enjoyed in the rest of the industrialized world
and this healthcare reform is clearly more fiscally sound than the status quo that existed before this legislation was signed on tuesday. do you honestly believe otherwise?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Was it a zip code by any chance?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
If they immediately arrested someone in France for 'hacking' into it, then I can only imagine it's because it is a medium of official business, else the consequences should be not taken any more seriously than if he had guessed my security question. I doubt police in France would respond quickly to my complaint to Twitter that someone is using my account.
Actually he used social engineering to get the Yahoo address and the answer to the linked "secret question" (date and place of birth) of an employee of twitter, so he got access to his e-mails. There he discovered that this employee used the same type of password for all his accounts (gmXXX for gmail, twXXX for twitter etc.), then he could log into twitter as an admin...
The security hole is therefore in Yahoo's system for forgotten password (too easy question), and in Twitter's policy for employee's passwords (which, since that, has changed).
I heard was "Let them eat cake"
Given the origin of that phrase and its usage to illustrate the complete unfamiliarity the French upper class had understanding the issues facing the poorer classes, it's hard to imagine why the current POTUS would use it.
Tweet, tweet.
protip: choose questions that let you put a password as your answer, and make sure the passwords are ugly-er than your main password
i believe it is right wing fiscal policies hat protect the dear darling rich from those horrid undeserving poor people and their undeserved healthcare
why are you smearing the democrats with the label of elitism when it is clearly the right that serves the elite?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
elucidation of all of the weaknesses of the new healthcare system
and yet, with all of the details you have given, and any more you want to add, ITS STILL WAY FUCKING BETTER THAN THE BULLSHIT STATUS QUO LAST WEEK: gouge you on skyrocketing rates, then deny or drop you when you claim benefits
you do understand that, right?: that it is easy to criticize any initiative in a vacuum: everything as complicated as this plan has downsides. however, when comparing the plan against the universe of your other choices, your job, in the real world, is to pick the least suckiest plan forward
government is bloated, inefficient, wasteful, and a disgusting bureaucracy. i agree with your criticisms 100%. and yet it is still WAY fucking better than healthcare corporations taking care of stockholders rather than you, and all the waste in THAT system
welcome to reality: derive your opinions considering all of your options. picking apart an option's weaknesses all by itself has no value, and so your opinion has no value
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
how do you get to sleep at night, knowing the bright frightening sun will visit you in a few hours? pfffft
i'll tell you what: i'll take the word of the congressional budget office, trusted by right and left, rather than fox news hysteria, that the new plan will save money
is it perfect? hell no. there are already obvious improvements discussed, and they WILL be implemented. its a living system, constantly adjusting
this legislation is simple recognition that the current us healthcare system SUCKS SHIT and needs to be comprehensively reformed. a piecemeal plan would never have worked, as it would be blocked by the do-nothing republicans and even if enacted in dribs and drabs, it would never amount to the real change and necessary systemic alterations pointed at stemming the rising tide of red we were sinking in
let's put it this way: do you defend the status quo before sunday? do you think it was acceptable? did things need to CHANGE out of simple fiscal responsible?
if your answer is yes (hopefully, if you have the slightest bit of intellectual honest about you) then i will in the spirit of intellectual honesty also say the health reform plan is flawed
but the beauty of it is: there's no going back: we've finally openly admitted things are horribly fucked up in our current system and it needs to be altered in fundamental ways. no more dithering for decades is possible, the commitment has been made, things are FINALLY getting fixed from a truly broken wasteful immoral and horribly expensive system
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
so you DON'T defend the bullshit system we just thankfully got rid of. at least you got that going for you
but you DO rip apart a superior system, simply because its not EXACTLY superior according to your exacting specifications
so after a fucking YEAR of trying to get a better system, with the myriad of competing voices about what is better than our current system screaming and gnashing their teeth, of which your voice is but one voice of millions, we finally got some consensus on something that is CLEARLY better. that's how politics works, you know? but YOU STILL WON'T FUCKING SUPPORT IT, because its not superior in EXACTLY the way you deem acceptable
i think i dated a chick like you once. what an annoying hard to please bitch
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
... in order to have access to twitter accounts. First, it contacted Twitter to inform them about their security flaws, but as he wanted to be famous, he then published his "hack" and disclosed some Twitter internal information which probably explains why Twitter registered a complaint against him (source, in French).
I'm glad more people are waking up the fact that easily guessed security challenge questions suck donkey balls. Most of us probably go along and give weak answers that could be guessed, worst of which is likely Mother's Maiden Name since it's almost as common a data point as one's Socialist Insecurity number. I wish more sites would implement Chase's persistent cookie check that has you authenticate with a randomly generated code that gets emailed to the account's email address on file if the cookie isn't present. Of course, that still leaves one vulnerable if the email account gets hacked, but it's better than redundant and weak security questions. I dread having to fill those out, and it's especially painful on sites that require a bunch of them.
Oh, and by the way, I love - absolutely LOVE - seeing Socialists argue about whether or not the corrupt health care takeover legislation counts as real "reform" or does not because it doesn't go far enough in completely Socializing medicine. Ah leftists, you continually amaze me. Kudos to your side on successfully infiltrating and actively undermining our country, by the way.
The Constitution shall rise again.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
According to a French interview ( http://www.zataz.com/news/19125/Rencontre-avec-Hacker-Croll--le-visiteur-de-Twitter.html ), he did not hack Obama's account, just some random employee from Twitter. He did gain admin privileges, but he did not hack twitter; and the password recovery was from Yahoo's webmail.
and this is where me and the congressional budget office part ways with you
i read nothing beyond those words, as believing the system we had before this week is superior to this common sense health reform bill is clearly delusional
adios, propagandized retard
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
CBO said that money would be saved if PUBLIC option was implemented.
Good luck with your dill sprinkled crap dish.
Just so that you don't misunderstand, I am not eating from the same pot as you are, I live somewhere where meals are healthy and not filled with crap or hooves.
Cheers.
You can't handle the truth.
you're relying on outdated cbo numbers. the latest numbers right before the bill was signed did not include the public option, and it still saved $
#2:
but btw, you're right: the public option will save $$$, adn should be implemented, and it will. single point of purchase is where price controls can come into play, and the savings will be massive, none of these corporate assholes jacking your rates and denying you benefits while doctors ring up 10 unnecessary tests just so they can get paid. its insanity. thankfully, we're on track to finally fix this fucking bullshit broken system where the poor are fine, the rich are fine, and the middle class get shafted
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
FTA: "The man in question had no training in computers," said Mr. Coquillat. "He was just very cunning." Not very cunning since he got himself into trouble that could send him into jail.
because that's totally be a sign it was him for real.
If I have to use pre-determined questions, then I have to remember the answer. If I can write my own questions, I can associate things. I rarely even use question and answers. I have some weird, completely random sentence, with a strange answer that I can easily remember.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung