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How Activist DeRay Mckesson's Twitter Account Was Hacked
Racial justice activist DeRay Mckesson became the most recent victim of a high-profile Twitter account hack. Mckesson this week started to endorse for Donald Trump and posted a self-defamatory tweet. Later he announced that his account was hacked. What's interesting about this hack was that Mckesson had two-factor authentication enabled on "all" of his accounts. Hackers apparently resorted to a much-sophisticated attack: Hacker or hackers were able to take over by convincing Verizon to reset his SIM. With the SIM reset, the person responsible was able to receive text messages intended for Mckesson and therefore bypass the two-factor authentication the activist used to keep his account secure.
Just sayin'
Enough said.
Just goes to show that no matter how secure your system is there is still a human who needs to be able to access it at the end of the day, and that human is vulnerable to being tricked. This does call into question exactly how lax Verizon's customer service is at verifying that they are indeed talking to the account holder. Id be interested in hearing what Verizon has to say about this incident, whether or not proper procedure was followed or not.
What's next, people fooling Comcast?! -_-
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
What does "much-sophisticated" mean?
Any relation to the medical supply company?
the family that owns that must be billionaires.
So these days the word for "racism" is now "racial justice"?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
This story about DeRay Mckensson has been on Slashdot for over half an hour on a Sunday morning and there still aren't any blatantly racist posts.
They must all be in church or a Trump rally.
You are welcome on my lawn.
verizon was.
really? doing this sort of thing over the phone? fucking idiots. at least require a store visit.
Is this — his being a "Racial Justice Activist" — the best way to describe a person? The supposed profession seems straight out of the Onion's polls — along with other gems like "Grammar Innovator" and "Cactus Purchaser".
Seriously, has he done something more profound in his life than raising awareness and, if he did, why is not that mentioned in the write-up instead?
Well, at least now I have heard of the guy — the hack and /. have achieved for him, what his "activity" itself was never able to...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Users should be able to choose their own level of security to match their individual situations (consequences). With just one provider-imposed level, the same compromises between security and useability have to be selected and imposed on all users.
For instance, a user could choose to set security very lax (pwd over phone) if they have little to protect and value convenience. Someone with something to worry about might set security very tight (long/rand pwds, resets only in meatspace with two forms of ID).
The defense must match the threat. SMS "two factor" authentication is good enough for accounts with 100 followers, all family, friends and acquaintances of the nobody account holder. It's not good enough for people who have actual enemies.
"We don't know shit so we blame the bogeymen with their bogeyman-doings."
This is very useful. This way I know for a fact that the piece is empty fluffy nitwittery and needs burning before it touches the mind of the young and the gullible. BURN THAT SUCKER DOWN. For public safety.
but he sounds like a dick.
There's a bit more to it than this.
Twitter doesn't use SMS. SMS would be the only way that this "worked" as claimed.
I'm calling bullshit on what we're getting told here (Past "hacked" which I might believe...this, this is utter BULLSHIT.)
What the frick has happened to this site? I know slashdot has always been left leaning, but this...
"Racial justice activist DeRay Mckesson became the most recent victim of a high-profile Twitter account hack."
This man advocates violence against whites. This man advocates killing whites. This man is as much of a racist as the people he whines about--moreso, because most whites do not go on rants on the internet using their real identities about killing blacks. And before you claim it's satire, it isn't. If you say it's "harmless" or "balancing the scales" or some other nonsense about how this is okay for him to do because he's black, then you are a hypocrite arguing for special pleading.
He deserves exactly as much attention as you would afford someone from, say, coontown in your news feed: none.
Racism and violence are OK if you're on the Left. In fact it's celebrated.
Because you're on the 'correct' side and the ends justify the means, just as they always have with the Left.
Just listen to a Louis Farrakhan speech or a New Black Panthers speech, or heck, even Obama's long-time (until people started paying attention) minister Rev. Wright.
Compared to them, Trump is a racial peace-maker.
"Hackers apparently resorted to a much-sophisticated attack: Hacker or hackers were able to take over by convincing Verizon to reset his SIM."
Convincing a 'tard at Verizon to break some company rules? How in the fuck is this even remotely considered sophisticated. Or a hack for that matter?
No, it used to be 'news for nerds' with science stories and geeky projects that people were doing. Then .yro was added and it became a place to complain. All the future innovators of society left.
if they have little to protect and value convenience.
humans are really, really bad at making these sorts of determinations, they don't understand the risks, they don't have enough info to decide.
This is not YRO, you fucktard. TFA using SMS not being secure is newsworthy, and belongs in tech.slashdot.org.
Going off on a bit of a tangent about IOT, but it is relevant. OK, cellphones have to be controlled by the cellphone provider.
But do you like the fact that your GM car can be de-activated from the cloud (Onstar)?
Do want "Cloud connect" controlling your home router (Linksys; withdrawn quickly after backlash) https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
Do like spending good money on a home light controller (Revolv), only to have it bricked when the new owners after an acquisition decide they can't be bothered with it? https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
Anything "in the cloud" is susceptible to some minimum-wage level-1 helpdesk employee in Mumbai being fast-talked into handing over your password. You need to keep 100% control over as much of your possessions as possible.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
This man advocates violence against whites. This man advocates killing whites.
I've been following his twitter for a few years. Can you link me some of that? I must have missed that.
Seriously, do so.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.