If it's this easy to hack Trump's Twitter account and say things that could trigger war, maybe we need to reconsider allowing elected officials to use social media as their official communications channel. Instead, they should have a government run portal where they relay whatever info they need to.
Likely, yes. Perfect security might be impossible but I hear some people competent people remain in the DoD and NSA despite the administration's efforts.
Certainly it could be if security was an explicit design goal. Security is an afterthought for most social media companies since users getting hacked isn't typically a big deal; including in this case.
Notice, for example, that bank accounts are hacked much less frequently than twitter accounts.
>If it's this easy to hack Trump's Twitter account and say things that could trigger war
I think before going to war with a super power, a country will check with various diplomatic channels if that was really what was said. In addition, if war could be triggered by a tweet, stuff isn't going so well anyway. With the possible exception of North Korea, I can't think of a single country that would go to war with the United States over any possible tweet by the President or anyone else, even if the tweet was real.
While it's unlikely North Korea would just launch missiles on that basis, is that really a gamble you want to take?
Imagine such exploit taking place at a moment of greater tension, and consider the fact that the President is already prone to erratic behavior online which his staff then attempts (or not) to conform to existing policy.
EDIT: right after reading this thread I glanced at the headlines, only to discover that intel analysts are (allegedly) upset that the following Presidential tweet included a snapshot of a till-then classified surveillance image. I offer this as an example of why traditional diplomatic and security norms may be more fragile than you suspect.
That shared understanding has never existed in history. Intelligence and diplomacy has always been part of warcraft. The Spanish-American War and Pearl Harbor are two notable cases of war triggered by communications.
They probably mean tweeting something like "At 11:45 EDT, the United States will be launching a tactical missile strike against Iran's Natanz and Karaj nuclear reactors, unless the Ayatollah agrees to permanently cease their operations", not "Fatty Kim Jong-Un is a loser!"
I doubt it would actually start a war, but it could definitely cause problems, especially if they believe the tweet may have actually been a "testing of the waters" rather than a result of a compromised account.
I think we need to reconsider the value of Twitter as a communications channel, along with the other social media platforms. They should not be taken so seriously.
Am I the old man yelling at the kids to get off my server yet?
33 comments
[ 6.9 ms ] story [ 78.3 ms ] thread> It's worth noting the client is Cloudhopper: that has been compromised before.
> https://twitter.com/gruber/status/859857475146854402
Looking up the hashtag the attackers used, I came across this blog post alleging the problem being AT&T's: https://www.treyexgaming.com/index.php/2019/08/26/how-the-sa...
Food for thought.
Regardless of whether the alleged source of insecurity is what happened here, SMS-based authentication was a mistake.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/twitter-em...
Notice, for example, that bank accounts are hacked much less frequently than twitter accounts.
Heck, you could make it a static website.
I think before going to war with a super power, a country will check with various diplomatic channels if that was really what was said. In addition, if war could be triggered by a tweet, stuff isn't going so well anyway. With the possible exception of North Korea, I can't think of a single country that would go to war with the United States over any possible tweet by the President or anyone else, even if the tweet was real.
If that tweet happened to drop at the same time as something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar..., who knows?
Imagine such exploit taking place at a moment of greater tension, and consider the fact that the President is already prone to erratic behavior online which his staff then attempts (or not) to conform to existing policy.
EDIT: right after reading this thread I glanced at the headlines, only to discover that intel analysts are (allegedly) upset that the following Presidential tweet included a snapshot of a till-then classified surveillance image. I offer this as an example of why traditional diplomatic and security norms may be more fragile than you suspect.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/11674933719732551...
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/30/trump-says-us-wasnt-involved...
I miss the shared understanding of sticks, stones, and words.
Buying or selling a stock is a low effort action explicitly a predicting the future.
I doubt it would actually start a war, but it could definitely cause problems, especially if they believe the tweet may have actually been a "testing of the waters" rather than a result of a compromised account.
This is wholly possible with the use of ActivityPub:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
Who ever believes any of the random sewage that pours forth from that overgrown child's Twitter account, anyway?
Big if true!
Am I the old man yelling at the kids to get off my server yet?
Why was this flagged?
https://send.firefox.com/download/e222e4a47bf6d23a/#l4p0SxK4...
You're welcome.
PGP is not. https://latacora.singles/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem.html