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.
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?
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.
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.