CBS Twitter Feed Compromised

The BBC reports that two Twitter accounts belonging to CBS news have been suspended after they were compromised on Saturday afternoon. From the article: "Fake messages appearing on the @60Minutes account criticised US support for 'terrorist' rebels in Syria and others accused Barack Obama of trying to 'take away your guns.' A group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army claimed to have been responsible for hijacking the accounts."

Comments

curious combination of issues

[Trepidity]

If we take the messages at face value, it must be someone who is: 1) in favor of the Syrian state against the rebellion there; yet 2) a gun-rights advocate who opposes attempts to "take away your guns".

I guess it's possible to argue both that widespread gun ownership is needed as a bulwark against tyranny, and yet that the Syrian government is not an example of a tyrannical government where it's justified to actually use those guns to rebel. But that's not a very common position.

Re:curious combination of issues

[fatalwall]

Its also possible to argue that the two posts are very related in regards to wanting to keep gun rights in our contry and not wanting the US spending resources to support other countries. Sounds like some one from a group like the tea party. The term terrorist for the Syrian rebellion is most likely intended to shame the US gov. As we all know one mans terrorist is another mans patriot. The choice of term patriot, rebel, terrorist, etc is a psychological game.

Re:curious combination of issues

[fustakrakich]

What, are you here selling the war also? Have you ever looked to see who the 'rebels' are? In fact this submission is pure garbage to 'inflame the masses'.

Meanwhile, the FCC says 'obscenities' for propaganda is cool. Golly gee! If only Janet had "Bomb Iran" tattooed on her titties...

Re:curious combination of issues

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also possible that the poster of all of these messages is simply a troll trying to say as many inflammatory things as possible.

Most likely, considering the rest of the tweets:

        "The US government is hiding the real culprit of the Boston bombing"
        "The US government is sponsoring a coup in Venezuela and a terrorist war in Syria"
        "Your duty is to protect your nation from the parasites that have taken your government"
        "Obama wants to destroy the Syrian and American people. We must stop this beast"

Looks more like trollbait than any one political ideaology.

Re:curious combination of issues

[femtobyte]

Looks more like trollbait than any one political ideaology.

Have you seen the political ideologies this country generates? All too often, the reality transcends attempts at parody --- the lobbyist pundits brought in by the media as "serious" viewpoints are more sick and incoherent than the foulest internet troll.

looks like it's time

[DrProton]

for two-factor authentication on twitter.

Re:First post

[tqk]

And slow news day!

I can see modding this into oblivion for its subject, but its content is bang on. Since when is cracking a twitter account of any import/interest whatsoever? CBS' twitter person can't pick passwords? Really?!? "OMG, it's an international incident, an attack on the Fourth Estate, a national tragedy, ..." and this sort of thing happens all the time on slow news days. See the Xkcd "Someone ripped down a CIA poster!" comic.

The most interesting part of this is, someone actually thinks it's worth his time to crack CBS' twitter account. Now that is a wasted existence. Ran out of pr0n, did you?

Constant plague

[jones_supa]

What's going on? I keep hearing "Sorry for the spam, our Twitter account was hacked" from various companies all the time.

Does the site itself have security vulnerabilities or are these just stolen or phished passwords?

Twitter should start looking to provide some extra security features to avoid this kind of problems.