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Comment by jaxxstorm | Hacker News Reader

I'm flabbergasted they haven't just hit the panic button and shut everything down.

Unless, perhaps, they can't.

Apparently blue check marks can’t tweet atm: https://twitter.com/brandontwall/status/1283525485440503811?...

I've got a check and I can't tweet. It just says 'unable to send'. Twitter must have no idea where the source of the hack is.

I canna stop it Cap'n, the computer's overridden the manual override!

You mean shutdown Twitter? I think that's a bit extreme in this case.

Is it? They don't appear to know what will be hit next or how to stop it.

The hackers are changing the login information of the hacked accounts too, gonna require a massive amount of cleanup.

It's not too hyperbolic to say that WW3 could be started on a platform like Twitter. Having a "shutdown" button doesn't seem that extreme when essentially the entire site seems to be compromised. I'd bet my bottom dollar that Congressional hearings are going to happen.

Ok but a few accounts asking for Bitcoin from rubes isn't WWIII

They got Obama’s account too. What would happen if they got Trump’s?

If you make a shutdown button, that becomes a new target for hackers

Any more of a target than the other administration/moderation tools Twitter has available?

There's always a shutdown button. Twitter can simply edit the DNS records to point to a static maintenance page.

Yup, people forget sometimes the core fundamentals here. These are just websites at the end of the day.

To what end?

What if you prevented the intentional start of WW3, that would be quite the trampling of some rights

It hasn't gotten so far that heads of states end up in angry loops of escalation (yet). Luckily the only 2 hotheads in that position are Trump and Kim Jong-Un, I would argue and they seem to get along.

I don’t, they can say anything posing as anyone and the general public will believe it, this is a genuine hazard. Seriously, if I were them I’d pull the plug until this is fixed.

Not really.

As far as we can tell right now, Obama and Biden could've posted about a complete coup to assassinate Trump and that every middle eastern country already has nukes on their way...

Its not extreme at all.

Given the nature of how twitter has influenced elections, why would this be extreme? So far the known targets all appear to be of a particular political persuasion, but I haven't seen a comprehensive list yet.

Imagine if the hacker was a bit more nefarious and hacked Trump's account to say he was launching a first strike attack against Iran or on Musk's account saying he was halting Model S production due to battery defect. The real world ramifications could be immense.

Or just posted some spirit-cooking pizzagate nonsense as Bill Gates.

One of those is order of magnitude worse than the other.

...I really hope Musk is keeping his account secure.

Ok, y'all have convinced me. Shut it down!

Not as extreme as demonstrating that they evidently lack the ability to stop it...

Twitter used to go down all the time. Just put up the fail whale for old time's sake.

that would actually add a little charm to this shit storm. A curious devil inside me would like to be a fly on the wall at twitter right now.

a temp fix is to modify the backend to prevent anyone from pasting a bitcoin address or any long string of numbers and letters that may resemble such an address

Not really. That just prevents them from posting bitcoin addresses. They still have access to all the accounts and can post whatever they like. It's still dangerous. And what about all the real posts that contain long strings?

i said 'temp'. how many real posts are 30+ chars string of gibberish? like .01% of all posts ?

For the specific variation this hack is currently taking, sure. But the actual problem is that someone has access to these accounts and can post anything they want. That is not okay, and has nothing to do with bitcoin addresses.

Cryptocurrency scams have been going on for years despite the fix being an easy "if reply to a high-profile account and contains the words "bitcoin" or "giveaway" then ban".

If they couldn't (or didn't want to) do it then I very much doubt they can do it now.

Instead twitter will repeatedly ban my account for having very little activity.

The automatic bans on new accounts are just a scummy tactic to get everyone's phone numbers.

A bitcoin scam, in the grand scheme of things, is on the more harmless end of the spectrum of what they could do with this. They absolutely should shut it down while they work this out.

remember the failwhale?

the anti-chaos monkey will just self heal the system, heh heh heh heh heh

Exactly. Just like AT&T and Verizon often shutdown the telephone system when its being abused.

ATT and Verizon also don't block users for speaking something that goes against their CEO's politics.

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