Slashdot Mirror
Russian Hacker Selling Information of 32 Million Twitter Accounts, Report Says (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The hacker who has links to the recent Myspace, LinkedIn, and Tumblr data breaches, is claiming to have obtained a database of millions of Twitter accounts. The data reportedly includes addresses, usernames, and plain-text passwords of 379 million Twitter accounts. The hacker, Tessa88, wants 10 bitcoins, or about $5,820 for the cache. On Wednesday, LeakedSource claimed that the real number of accounts was just under 33 million, which is more than 10 percent of Twitter's monthly active accounts. This follows the hacking of Mark Zuckerberg's Twitter and Pinterest accounts.
You own social network. Again.
need to make this site a weekly visit:
https://haveibeenpwned.com/
There are virtually no posts criticizing the hacker, despite his harmful and despicable actions. Posts suggesting he should he and similar hackers punished severely are promptly modded to -1. It's as if Slashdot users approve and encourage this type of behavior. Why?
You have to be a real asshole and psychopath to think that selling hacked accounts should get someone killed, but calling for the murder of a person should not get your comment modded down.
...is on the list?
Or more generally, is there a reputable website that provides this service already?
>> 32 million Twitter accounts
OK, let me make the opening bid. I'll give you $0.32 for all of 'em, since about 70% are probably dormant, another 20% are hooked up to broadcast services, 9% are chatbots, and the rest are probably morons for using easily-guessable passwords or falling victim to "data entry" phishing attacks.
Without us there'd be no interweb
Someone claims this is a scam - the accounts were actually sourced from tumblr and linkedin leaks
https://jesterscourt.cc/member...
Since the possibility of old account might have been hacked, should we dump our old accounts and set up new ones?
Any suggestion from the experts?
Why shouldn't compromising millions of people be a capital offense? The death penalty is not murder. By definition, murder is illegal. The death penalty is not illegal, therefore it is not murder.
I see exactly what you're doing, and it's quite obvious.
In the space of an hour (at 3 in the morning Slashdot time mind you), eight posts by ACs were made which were all off-topic shitposts, and the SOLE comment (rather than the alleged plural; "posts") claiming he should be punished was saying he should be executed. Hacking a social media account is not and never will be worthy of the death penalty or even a ruler across the knuckles. After all those posts, you MAGICALLY come along and start pointing and saying "Look! Slashdot defends hackers!"
I would not be surprised in the least if you made those comments yourself, knowing they would get downmodded for being irrelevant and childish, just so you could scream from the rooftops about how slashdot "defends hackers".
Yes to 1, no to 2.
Actually, no, this is a trend in many of the articles about data breaches, not just this one. The problem is that many of the discussions revolve around criticizing victims of the attacks and a general lack of security. If this is, indeed, a list of email addresses and passwords derived from other breaches and tested against Twitter, there is no wrongdoing by Twitter. Many users are ignorant about security and shaming victims is uncalled for. Therefore the finger points squarely at the criminals carrying out the attacks. This is a crime of massive scope, which is why I believe extreme penalties are justified. I also feel it calls into question the ethics of many people here who seem to hold views such as that piracy isn't wrong and don't seem too bothered by hackers causing massive data breaches. Honestly, I'm calling into question what I see as questionable ethics of many on this site, and that's the intent if my post. As for your conspiracy theory about the posts on this page, you're wrong and can go shove it.
Nah. Just watch the comments of any story like this on Slashdot. Most people here don't think that black hats like this deserve any type of punishment.
One other thing... this isn't hacking a social media account. This is profiting from compromising the accounts of millions of people. Nice straw man, though.
I paid those fuckers for access, never got one - all searches still return bare numbers without any data - "subscribe to see raw data".
My five (!) support requests remain unanswered (I sent the first one over four days ago).
It looks like they indeed have the leaked data, but they are not willing to share it with anyone.
It's a good thing I don't have Myspace, LinkedIn, and Tumblr accounts. Twitter? I think I got two of them I started a years ago. At the time I'm sure I had a reason. I get messages on two different email accounts from Twitter, so I figure I have the accounts.
Maybe I can go cancel them (if it's possible). I see no need for them whatsoever. Or am I missing something?
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Tessa88 was the benefactor that gave the data to LeakedSource. He's not the hacker. Way to go ZDNet. You just blamed an innocent person. https://www.leakedsource.com/b...
Go away!
Simple; if you have a security hole, it will be abused.
Although it is not ethical, it is also not ethical for companies of that size to think about security last.
If it's true that the passwords have been harvested by malware which uploads the victim's browser's password cache, then this is not just Twitter. It's every site you use. The lesson, if you create websites which require authentication, outsource the authentication function to OpenID providers who have three factor authentication (e.g. Google) - or implement three factor authentication infrastructure yourself, which is not trivial.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
The death penalty is not murder. By definition, murder is illegal. The death penalty is not illegal, therefore it is not murder.
Hello! We don't often see this level of "logic" on /. Welcome AC/Beck/Limburg/...
And grass is green. Maybe it is too obvious.
Seriously, find out who this guy is, arrest him, destroy his data, and execute him.
I assume you mean the idiot at Twitter who thought it was acceptable to store plain text passwords in a database. A server should never even see a plain text password. Passwords should be salted and encrypted in the browser, using SHA-256 or stronger, before being transmitted to the server.
It's as if Slashdot users approve and encourage this type of behavior. Why?
Because the solution to the problem is better security, not more ethical hackers. Hackers will hack, regardless of the severity of the punishment. How many hackers do you think will be dissuaded by stern disapproval from Slashdot?
of the 32,888,300 accounts, you will find four regular real user accounts and 32,888,296 bot accounts.
I think most people here do not agree with the hacker's actions, however most of us probably think that people should stop voluntarily putting all their informations and their lives into public social networks. Yes the hacker is to blame, but all the users can be blamed too.
What makes you think it was someone at Twitter? This could easily be a db from a third party dev from before oauth.
Most of us have come to accept that black hats will never be punished, because on the internet it's very easy to involve multiple unfriendly countries in a crime, and when you put American and Russian agents on the same case it's very hard to get them to stop playing "my country has the biggest dick therefore I'm in charge" and start cooperating to catch the black hat. There's a subtle difference.
0 1 - just my two bits
I lost my twitter password 5 years ago and changed emails and twitter will not reset it for me.. maybe the russian dude can let me know what my password is..
Where's the list? I need to get into my Twitter account...
Because there should be no capital offenses, big man. Even more so for hacking cases where it's particularly easy to frame someone.
the Death Penalty is illegal in the civilised world, therefore it's murder there
PS millions of people were not compromised
millions of peoples social media accounts were compromised
those are different and not equal things
I think most people here do not agree with the hacker's actions, however most of us probably think that people should stop voluntarily putting all their informations and their lives into public social networks. Yes the hacker is to blame, but all the users should be blamed too.
FTFY
If you do something stupid, even if someone else does something wrong, you still bear part of the responsibility