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Comment by philip1209 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know how the account was compromised - but, I notice that Twitter's hardware U2F support is not designed to be very useable. They only allow one security key per account, whereas most users have multiple - one on the keychain, one left in the laptop, etc. So, I bet that high-risk accounts like Jack are not even using this enhanced security mode because of its poor user experience.

Compare this to Google where every employee is issued multiple hardware keys, internal systems require security keys, and they put a lot of effort into their "Advanced Protection Program" to make it useable: https://landing.google.com/advancedprotection/

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Twitter and Google are on completely different planes when it comes to what data and access they have to protect.

And? If you want your company to avoid becoming a headline, you need the best security you can afford.

That's true. One is the President's principle mechanism of speaking with the American public and firing top officials.

If Trump's account got hacked it could quite literally result in the death of millions.

More likely is that some Russian or Chinese hackers would make statements that tank the stock market. While setting up some short positions immediately prior.

The funny part about this is that if we are to believe Trump is a Manchurian candidate, they already did this with the trade war.

I’m just curious how you imagine this happening. @realdonaldtrump tweeting “I HEREBY ORDER...” is not a legally binding order. Launching nuclear missiles or whatever requires authentication codes and can only be ordered via a portable radio alongside a series of codebooks, all of which is carried by a military aide who is always near the President. Another country isn’t going to start a war based on some weird tweets. It’s an extremely unlikely and weird risk.

A well crafted message that inflames followers to riot...

I'm the kind of person who, for example, doubted the Covington Kids story from the beginning. By which I mean I'm not particularly alarmist about a putative vast right-wing catastrophe taking place. But any popular leader (and he's very popular among the people he's popular with) can start incidents like that by accident.

You mean like accusing people of treason? (punishable by death) He’s already done that from his account. To my knowledge Comey hasn’t been lynched.

This is true. Trump is so loud the whole time that it's hard to take him very seriously, even for his supporters.

Ok but what “riot” in human history has killed MILLIONS of people? The Rwandan genocide was pretty close, except the groundwork for inciting it was laid over the course of months via state radio and they imported machetes into the country before the message was sent to “cut down the tall trees”. A compromised Twitter account isn’t going to do it.

His tweets regularly have material impact on the markets.

But how would that kill millions of people? There’s a super indirect chain of events there.

Imagine triggering a global depression.

Imagine what effect that would have on already-pressured populations across the globe.

If North Korea did have a means of delivering nukes with ICBMs, and this previous type of thing: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/94835555702242099...

had escalated more, I don't think it's too far-fetched to imagine an unstable dictator sending off a nuke after being goaded on twitter.

I think it's within the realms of possibility at the very least, although very unlikely (mostly because NK hasn't got a decent delivery system, their nukes aren't very advanced/portable yet and Kim Jong Un's probably not too keen for NK to be destroyed in retaliation).

Given Trump's recent tweet of the spy satellite image, and the apparent taunting of Iran, it's also possible that type of thing could be responsible for triggering future terrorist attacks (although obviously that's not millions of people).

Terrorists and rogue dictators are often described as "unstable" or "irrational", but they tend to be rational within certain boundaries. For example, if you actually believe the nonsense about an afterlife filled with dozens of virgin concubines, suicide bombing becomes a rational decision, aside from being motivated by an irrational belief. Likewise, Kim's strategy follows the basic form of hostage-taking. If Kim actually "sent off a nuke", he would lose much of his leverage, just as a hostage taker loses leverage as soon as he starts killing hostages.

“principal”

Yeah. On Twitter you can potentially impersonate the President and cause weeks/months of political chaos by calling someone the N-word or something similar.

This raises an interesting question. Such an attacker would need to craft a tweet with the following constraints:

* Plausible so that people do not believe it is a compromise

* Offensive enough to cause action

* Not in the category that people just roll their eyes and think Trump is being outrageous on the internet again.

This is probably harder than it seems at first glance.

> This raises an interesting question. Such an attacker would need to craft a tweet with the following constraints:

> * Plausible so that people do not believe it is a compromise

> * Offensive enough to cause action

> * Not in the category that people just roll their eyes and think Trump is being outrageous on the internet again.

> This is probably harder than it seems at first glance.

Is the third bullet even a thing after the whole Greenland debacle? Before then I had already thought I'd heard it all.

"I am now reviewing papers to double the tariffs against China. I will win this trade war no matter what."

Imagine if you were an intelligence agency and you were permitted to surveil American communications, and there was this pesky congressman who didn't want to support your organization, so you collect lewd photos of him from his phone and post them on his Twitter repeatedly.

You could effectively use the data on Twitter to control the leaders of the US. "Hey, remember that congressman who didn't like us and then accidentally tweeted his own sexts? That was hilarious. Anyway, we'd really like you to increase funds and be more permissive about what our agency can do."

Apropos of nothing, here's an interesting interesting website: https://votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/23162/anthony-wein...

> Imagine if you were an intelligence agency and you were permitted to surveil American communications, and there was this pesky congressman who didn't want to support your organization, so you collect lewd photos of him from his phone and post them on his Twitter repeatedly.

> You could effectively use the data on Twitter to control the leaders of the US. "Hey, remember that congressman who didn't like us and then accidentally tweeted his own sexts? That was hilarious. Anyway, we'd really like you to increase funds and be more permissive about what our agency can do."

> Apropos of nothing, here's an interesting interesting website: https://votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/23162/anthony-wein....

I may be dense but it was not clear to me what the point in linking to the votesmart site was? Is it the change between pro/against for patriot act?

> collect lewd photos of him from his phone and post them on his Twitter repeatedly

He's suggesting that anthony weiner was "framed" by some 3-letter agency.

I use U2F everywhere and can tell you that Twitter's usability with U2F is really poor. Can't remember why I stopped using U2F on twitter, but it's probably because of that fact that I couldn't use multiple keys.

Is it worth considering advanced protection as a normal person? Would it make life a pain in the butt?

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