Twit Teens Tweak Twitter
The ABC tells us that a Melbourne schoolboy blamed for Twitter meltdown
A 17-year-old Australian schoolboy said he unwittingly caused a massive hacker attack on Twitter which sent users to Japanese porn sites and took out the White House press secretary’s feed.
Pearce Delphin, whose Twitter name is @zzap, admitted exposing a security flaw which was then pounced upon by hackers, affecting thousands of users and causing havoc on the microblogging site for about five hours.
First off, these were scriptkiddies, not hackers, that exploited the problem. The fact that Twitter had no safe guards in place to protect itself from Javascript garbage, given the nature of the site, is truly amazing. The only thing young Mr. Delphin did was to show the gaping hole in Twitter’s security, and the monkeys rushed in to fill it with porn sites – a rather blatant indicator of juvenile males.
6 comments
You got that right Bryan! I really hate when ignorant morons (such as the press) go screaming “HACKERS!!” every time this kind of crap happens (though, I also find it hilariously funny! And is the main reason I do not, and never will, use the likes of Twitter etc!) Bahh! 😉
OT: Just to prove we have ISP’s similar to yours, I am up at my housemates daughter/son-in-law’s farm setting up a 4Mbps Satellite Internet link. This is because they are rather more sane than the average user, and dumped IE & Outlook as soon as they got their PC home and use Firefox & Thundrbird. The guy sent out to install and setup the Sat Terminal/modem had no idea how to use either and said it couldn’t be done until they reinstall IE/Outlook. So they called me, and I needed some down time (my PC caused massive headaches!) Took me about 20 min’s to setup, and that was only because the idiot changed the default pwd on the modem and didn’t tell anyone! So I had to do a ‘factory reset’ and go from there. And these people actually get paid! A-Mazing! No wonder the World is going down the crapper! Hmmmph!
Anyway, I thought I’d borrow a bit of bandwidth on the new Sat system to test it, and obviously, it works! 😆 See… Your blog has a multitude of uses! And thanks for your help. 😉 Always appreciated! 😀
Tell you what but… If this thing is even remotely close to 4Mbps… I’ll eat the damned modem! I reckon 2Mbps TOPS IMHO! (they lie! As I said to Chris, if the Sat was right above their house, maybe 4! But given the sat is over the Tropic of Capricorn (easy to see as the Sat dish is pointed almost horizontal to the ground aimed North at the far horizon), not a chance)!
Well… back to work! 😉
It’s amazing how other people’s problems are more interesting than our own, and usually easier to fix 😉
The upload speeds are not great on satellite systems, so they aren’t terribly practical for servers, but download speed are usually alright, unless they have over-sold their relay, i.e. too many people trying to use the same relay for traffic. Over-selling is a problem with US satellite systems, but it’s getting better. Oh, they rate the speed with a single user relay, so it is the theoretical maximum.
Well, this sat company sux big time! The only time the thing is usable is during the off-peak time! During peak yesterday, the u/l speeds were all over the place and constantly changing from 0 to about 60kbps! As soon as it hit off-peak (11 PM), it magically improved dramatically (still nowhere near 4Mbps, but around 600Kbps – 1Mbps). They hate people like me, I know what I’m doing, and I have all the tools! I have a full log of the last 24 hours, and it’s pathetic. Luckily we have a 14-day cooling off period for any purchase by law. So, if they don’t fix it in the next 48 hours, I told my friends to go elsewhere (there are a few Sat providers here).
I am trying to wean my friends off Facebook here BTW! 😉 They have already lost their credit card details once (I got them to get a debit card to use for online transactions. Much safer. If there’s nothing in the acc’t, they lose nothing if it’s compromised. Just close it, and get another. Banks & credit companies hate that, but they can all go get screwed!)
OK, TTYL! 😉
Sounds like they have over-sold their relay, which is the big problem in the US. As soon as people log out, available bandwidth jumps.
We have “no hassle return” laws on specific items, and some stores offer the policy, but I guarantee that the telecoms don’t. If you sign the contract, you are stuck until it expires.
Our debit cards work differently, but we have pre-paid credit cards that do the same thing, and a limit of $50 on credit card fraud on standard credit cards. Out debit card system is damn dangerous, as it controls a lot things which makes it very dangerous.
Banks make a lot of money off our money. They have no room to complain given the pathetic rates they pay on interest bearing accounts.
That twitter story made laugh. I’m not surprised they got hit by a script. They are not exactly a reliable service…. or a very secure one. The supposed private tweets are pretty easy to find… every tweet has it’s own url. I wouldn’t put anything on twitter that I wouldn’t want on the front page of the NYT.
I have to agree on the debit cards here. They are very dangerous. The system is set up to favor the banks with little protection for the consumer. Credit cards are much safer… the consumer is only liable for the first $50 in the case of fraud and most banks waive that if you report it immediately.
I have consistently refused a debit card but the bank got me anyway… they sent me a new atm card that can also be used as a debit card whether I want it or not.
Yes, the combination ATM/debit cards are the pits. They give people access to everything, if you lose them.
People don’t seem to think about security until something nasty happens. I assume that something nasty will happen, but that’s probably because I’ve known more than a few hackers.