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Chinese Spies Used Fake Facebook Profile To Friend NATO Officials
An anonymous reader writes "Late last year, senior British military officers, Defense Ministry officials, and other government officials were tricked into becoming Facebook friends with someone masquerading as United States Navy admiral James Stavridis. By doing so, they exposed their own personal information (such as private e-mail addresses, phone numbers, pictures, the names of family members, and possibly even the details of their movements), to unknown hackers."
oh hai, asl?
Who knew that if you weren't friends with someone, they couldn't see your data. Hmm. Seriously though. Senior NATO officials have Facebook pages! Dumb! Their private information is on those Facebook pages? Dumber...
Admirals need friends too.
Social engineering FTW ... again.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
That senior government officials are posting things deemed sensative to facebook? I mean, really? Let's hope they don't share launch codes with thier "inner circle" of facebook friends.. /sarc
Please dont misrepresent this. These government people are at fault here for being stupid.
There is no other way to communicate online other than facebook for government officials???
Seriously, why do these people use Facebook anyway? It's just a massive security risk for people in that position, and presumably the only upside is they can post "Just nuked Tehran lol" on their wall when the balloon goes up..
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
I thought in this day and age, people (especially, ya know, important, educated people) would realize that doing things online is
the same as doing them in public... except there's always a fly on the wall...
a very smart fly... that never goes anywhere... and is a chatty cathy.
Registering for Facebook with a fake name hardly qualifies as hacking.
Surprisingly, the headline is more accurate than the story.
Hey, how's it going?
As I'm getting older I'm starting to value my privacy more and more. So... I deleted all my friends, posts, and pictures on facebook and renamed my name to a fictitious character. As I'm getting older I value my privacy. If I want to talk about something I'll wait until I see them. I don't need everyone knowing my business. I think all of us here should do the same. Too many people are addicted to facebook. It's an illness. Do you have any idea how many work colleagues hit facebook during work hours or on the phone hitting fb during the commute home ?
Too bad you won't say "goodbye!". This is another example of s*** floats to the top in government, military and business.
Who doesn't have a fake facebook to friend pornstars and sluts? Chinese just get their jollies by looking at US officials private lives... *shrugs*
...I do not think it means what you think it means. Fake Facebook profile == "hacker"?
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
You can play this both ways! Set up honey Pot NATO "special palls" fake accounts with "too good to be true" details attached. This will keep everyone typing and uploading fake contrived pictures happily for weeks. Think of the lies they could feed each other, and how big the final facebook agency will become in terms of budget and company cars. It's the war of the future! :0)
The purpose of existence is to make money.
Too bad you won't say "goodbye!
http://noithatducduong.com/.
While hindsight is 20/20, common sense should have prevailed when it comes to Facebook and security. Social networks should, on a general basis, be banned from all parts of the government in which security _could_ be an issue.
Are you sure they are spies but not some spammers?
I guess anyone talking to one of these official would very well be labeled as spies.
That does it.
I want the Internet closed before 11.
Email addresses, phone numbers, family members? Those officials probably give out the same information when they sign up for customer appreciation cards.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
Tweet: I am accessing hi-security government documents right now.
Tweet: I am posting them online - please no-one look at them
Tweet: They are located at xafdsfd.fdsfdsfds.com please do not go there.
Tweet: They are not password protected so please don't open them.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Their personal information is their property, and they are free to share with with the rest of the world. As long as they don't post sensitive military information on Facebook, there is no damage done.
I'm not sure if the Chinese are better at spying, or just get caught more often.
Vietnam Veteran / Former Postal Worker -- Use Caution When Taunting!
The article's headline and teaser lines mention Chinese spies, but the article itself provides nothing to back up this claim. Where are they getting this information from?
+1 thumb up
A friend of mine who retired from CIA after 26 years once told me that his family was only happy for six of those years... and not six consecutive years. Cut off from family and friends back home and in contact only by letters and the occasional "home leave" of a month or two, he was trying to fit back in to the country he spent his life trying to serve (back in the days when the Agency was less of an operational force and more of an intelligence gathering organization). I can see how Facebook would have made their lives more enjoyable with all the family and friends news (and even minutia). I'm sure it's a security risk par excellance but I can certainly understand why they'd do it. And I can especially understand why a wife, stuck inside an apartment in Djibouti trying to order six months of canned food from Denmark, might.
I don't expect Slashdot readers to grok it, though.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
This just shows that the top 1% who run this world are a bunch of idiots. No wonder the world is such a mess!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Citizens of all nations shouldn't have to live in fear that Facebook will publish the most sensitive and private information of government officials and military secrets to their country's enemies. Facebook should be punished for revealing sensitive and private information entrusted to it to others.
Nothing like a good laugh to lift the irritation of having to futz with all the clocks again.
I was once friends with General Marriott Suites.
Well, obviously.
==> NATO officials... with Facebook accounts...
Oh. My. God.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Seriously, does it take half a brain to realize that a social-networking site is something they should be avoiding? Ok, so half a brain isn't necessary to be an official of any kind, just being a whole asshole, but still, there should be a class.
Then again, I don't have any such accounts at all. What do I feel about that? Great, since I know the benefits are not worth the price. It's the same reason I'd never hold a party at my house. Minor affair for major hassle.
. . . but seriously, does anyone know where I can find some launch codes?
I'm sorry, it just is. I'll start feeling bad when the bodies show up, but until then, I'm going to laugh.
didn't they get the memo?
I don't.
I don't have any FB accounts at all...fake or real.
Keeps things neater that way....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Kind of like saying that women that are raped are stupid for having been in their homes at the time. Right?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Maybe if she had a neon sign on the roof that said "Good Rapin' inside".
When the other side used prostitutes, drugs, money, and various other ways of extracting secrets!
that not everyone who claims to be your friend is really your friend! Shit, and it took some Chinese chicks offering blow jobs before he spilled his secrets. Also, there is a huge tendency in many of these agencies to over classify everything. Good thing he really didn't know any!!
I heard that the security team at Los Alamos wanted to classify a Soviet scientist's presentation! I guess someone had to point out that it had already been leaked to the USA.
No. It's more like turning off the radar and shutting down artillery at a front-line base.