I doubt Apple or Bill Gates have very many incriminating Twitter DMs. Kanye is a non-factor, nobody serious cares what a, respectfully, manic-depressive is DMing about.
Elon Musk might have some suspect DMs, but honestly I think his crazy Twitter behavior is priced into TSLA already.
I think this assumes that only the obvious accounts were affected (basically any that sent out the tweet about the scam). It's quite possible many accounts were accessed more quietly.
If they were stealthily looking for dirt, why would they draw so much attention to the compromise? There’s no way Twitter wouldn’t examine all of the accessed accounts now and the “this process access” theory is both sketchy in general (Guccifer 2.0 publicized the idea of putting forgeries into a dump to make them seem legitimate) and wouldn’t apply in this case since these are different accounts.
I don't think there was a way to hide this from Twitter once it was executed, since each hacked account got a password reset email. Assuming that you can't hide it from Twitter, then it's a fine strategy to make sure that everyone, especially potential customers of the hacked DMs, knows that you hacked these accounts.
If you're looking for dirt, you want to be the only one with the dirt to maximize potential for selling or blackmailing with said dirt. If you've found an exploit and exfiltrated the dirt that you care about, you might want to ensure that the exploit gets patched to stop others from being able to gain access to the dirt.
I would think it's more likely to be used as blackmail material, where they threaten to release them publicly if they aren't paid.
In that case, it's irrelevant what the public thinks of them, all that matters is what the blackmailed individual's ability to pay and what they thinks about the public seeing them.
Put another way, maybe Musk's DMs being leaked doesn't actually change anything, but maybe Musk feels like it changes a lot for him, either personally or professionally. That's worth money to someone with the DMs.
It's possible (though perhaps unlikely) that there are DMs that could get him 'cancelled'. I would guess that is the leverage that DM-blackmailers would use.
Sure, but I was actually commenting on how it doesn't have to be DMs that will get him cancelled. It only has to be DMs that look bad enough that he thinks something like that might happen. Or even some smaller thing.
If you're Musk with his money and resources, what's $10k or $20k to keep knowledge out of the public that you slept with your friend's or some random famous person's wife, or cheated on your girlfriend? The amount of money something like that is worth is relative to available money to the person and what the personal cost is to spend it. How much does it hurt Musk to spend $100k? Would he spend that much to try to keep knowledge of someone woman pregnant with his child getting an abortion? I think probably, if he thought he could keep the fact he paid secret if it came out later, since that would only make any story worse (regardless of how he feels about abortion, paying a lot to keep it secret is just fuel for any criticism while also being worthwhile for anyone that wants privacy).
This assumes they could only access DMs of people that sent out the spam (which includes Biden). In reality they could have pulled Trump and friends' DMs also, who have a history of using twitter for official use and seem to have questionable operational security.
Like I said, you don't need incriminating DMs, you just need the threat of incriminating DMs and enough authenticity proof to cause chaos. I can imagine certain governments who would pay money to have incriminating DMs about Joe Biden be released right before the election.
You think the FBI and SEC couldn't get a warrant, look through 10000 people's trading activity and have a list of 100 most likely suspects within a single day?
That's severely miscalculating the number of traders (around 10 million individuals, often with multiple accounts and multiple strategies, and not counting institutions). What I'm saying is that hiding in plain sight might be very easy - just join the crowd for a week and you'll look like many beginners that have scored surprisingly.
Do you trade? There are many ways to bet against a stock without actually selling it short. Shorting a stock is not even that capital efficient, and is capped at 100% return.
Sell a call spread, buy a put spread, do a diagonal calendar...
You'd be surprised. The SEC has largely been captured by the industry it regulates. Most employees there are junior level, looking to get hired into Wall Street.
There are certainly some strong employees as well, but they have only so much time.
> The SEC has largely been captured by the industry it regulates.
An objection that, while true, doesn't impact "will they go after Bitcoin scammers" much. If anything, it's precisely the sort of thing they'd prefer to do over fighting with industry.
Even very average positions could yield millions, especially a series of them. Imagine a "manager" of a MLM doing this with their team of sheeps. There are many teams like that.
I think the problem is you would need to use a previously active account to pull it off. If you get this hack today without an account history going back a ways, you're easy to find.
You think they could convict on "We looked at a thousand accounts and his was the most suspicious?"
If you don't leave evidence for a targeted inspection against you, it wouldn't help them to be able to narrow it down to "you probably did it" if they couldn't clear the "reasonable doubt" hurdle.
No, but it's enough to get a warrant for data or surveillance until they have enough evidence to build a case. They need to clear "probable cause" not "reasonable doubt."
No, I mean that you don't leave evidence for a targeted inspection against you to find. i.e. You execute the hack cleanly, the inspection against you finds nothing, and all they are left with is your suspicious trade, which is suspicious, but not prosecutable.
Before you're even under surveillance, you have to be perfect in leaving no fingerprints for XX years before/after and they only need you to screw up OPSEC once. Easy?
You just have to leave no evidence of the hack that links to you, but you have to do that anyway to get away.
There's nothing to hide after the fact. Dump the burner computer you used for the hack when you're done and never log in to the accounts, VPNs and VPSs you used again.
That you have the money is an open and legal fact, so you don't have to conceal anything really.
I know that's like a formulaic crack, but the last time I was at the DMV, I did wait like 2.5 hours ... because there were a huge number of people being served by a small number of people.
That's what efficiency looks like. Each transaction took a small amount of time, the clerks processed each one efficiently and had little downtime between them. Each clerk was maximally utilized, and the DMV was fully utilized all day.
A DMV where you could walk into at any time and a clerk was available to help you immediately would be incredibly inefficient: it would have too many clerks who were being paid to stand there not working. Convenient, yes, efficient, no.
I think it is very much a case-by-case basis, depending on a number of factors. Factors include, but are not limited to, what part of what government, purpose/mission, funding, incentives, and local culture.
Yes, one can find examples of incompetence and inefficiency if one looks, but one can find the opposite as well. I think a blanket attitude of government == inefficient incompetence is an unhelpful one, and a major part of how you get DMVs that deserve the purgatory comparison.
That isn't what OP was talking about, but to answer your separate question--in Seattle you have unarmed people who pushed some concrete blocks into the street, in Oregon you had well armed people occupying a federal building.
isn't most text you'll see nowadays going to be printed and standardized? I can't remember the last time I read a handwritten anything, aside from my own notes.
Yes, but do you not have a whiteboard in your workplace? anything an actual chinese person writes on that will be in a personalized cursive. Normal cityscapes will be filled with italicized, cursive, traditional, simplified, archaic forms. Merely learning to read newspaper and computer fonts is great for reading a newspaper or computer screen. Not so great for a fully functional life.
I lived in Asia for 15 years, speak, read, and write JP/Ch-Trad/Ch-Simp and I still struggle with handwriting and cursive. At this point, I've resigned my self to a lifelong hobby to improve.
Just because they've cut these projects or they're not generating revenue today doesn't mean they don't "need" them. What if the economy tanked in 2007 and Amazon decided to dissolve AWS?
The average American didn't (and probably doesn't) distrust their government on anywhere near the same visceral level as someone living in the soviet union.
In North America are non-supermarkets and non-warehouses even 5% of grocery retail? I think that restaurants being allowed to sell groceries would've been cool. But I don't see how mom and pop grocers move the needle at all here.
It's different in the cities. Especially large ones with reasonable immigrant communities. In Toronto, for example, a very sizeable portion of our grocery retail is via small grocers. The prices are cheaper (they source from small farms that supermarkets can't logistically coordinate with) and the quality (especially flavour, but often shelf life too) is almost always better. There are also clusters of small grocers like Kensington Market where rare foods are available that you just can't get at a supermarket. Rare spices, cheeses, or even a real thick, old fashion greek yogurt (perfect for home made tzatziki). The one thing that the small grocers skimp on is presentation though. The fruits and veggies are less shiny or less washed.
But in smaller towns in North America it's getting rarer and rarer to see even an independent butchery, let alone veggie market or bakery.
>I think that restaurants being allowed to sell groceries would've been cool.
At least 2 restaraunts in my town do this. Order online, drive around beck (sometimes with a line of cars, but never more than a 5 minute wait), and they drop your food/tp/etc in the trunk. Much better than hitting up Safeway or Costco, and not really much more expensive.
Elon Musk might have some suspect DMs, but honestly I think his crazy Twitter behavior is priced into TSLA already.