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Comment by woeirua | Hacker News Reader

Bingo, they're probably walking away with all of Twitter's internal data as we speak...

They're wasting time and money on purpose too, the dead rapper XXXTentacion just tweeted: “Smoking a fat blunt on my private island giving out bitcoin to my supporters”, Elon tweeted "hi" etc.

They also can't be stupid enough to not understand that using a single address that is blocked in most web wallets now is completely dumb.

> They also can't be stupid enough to not understand that using a single address that is blocked in most web wallets now is completely dumb.

Everyone always assumes stuff like this after every big criminal case. But every time it turns out that yes they were that stupid.

Occam's Razor. My bet is on it being some teenage hacker who was screwing around with Twitter APIs and noticed a glaring security flaw.

I sometimes get "we hacked your site, pay us bitcoin" spam via a contact page on my website. Once, I decided to send them a few cents to see if they were dumb enough to sweep it somewhere. To my surprise, they really were that dumb. It seems to be in some sort of wash trade loop (maybe a coin tumbler).

1Md6imvB2neTF3s1kFiMG473k1XrBhxQhF

Alternative take, it could be a distraction while they short various stocks. Obviously 12 BTC/100K isn't worth hacking Twitter. Perhaps if everyone is watching the Bitcoin address, they may miss the real heist.

Shorting stocks will be suspicious if they do it from accounts who have never done much volume before. There are insider traders who are caught all the time doing 1 big trade (relative to their account values and previous activity) miraculously at the right time.

Definitely, this is like the theorized “Goldfinger” attack on cryptocurrencies—sabotage the network after building up a sizeable short position in derivatives. However a Goldfinger attack on Twitter stock would be a challenge to hide, since any evidence of anomalous trading patterns could open you up to prosecution by the SEC. Might want to check for any huge buys of daily put options on TWTR...

But why do it after hours then?

That's what I first thought of a potential better scam. Pump and dump. Emergency news covid vaccine gets emergency authorization or the opposite Moderna is pulled from next phase it killed people. I know the SEC is good at sniffing that out but seems like could easily get more than a few 100k especially given the Moderna news / earnings season

"Funding secured to take Tesla private at $42069 per share"

TWTR is probably the only stock that wouldn't bounce back immediately after the scam is revealed.

All the DMs would definitely be valuable.

That's definitely one way you could blackmail people for more BTC, or unmasking various prominent anonymous accounts... Lots of way to use that info to make serious money on the darkweb.

Why anyone take such a big risk when they could play with stocks with one account.

Go ahead.... try to anonymously purchase stock.

Pretty sure this is trivial. Buy someone’s identity on the dark web to pass an online brokerages KYC then wire money in from an international bank. I say this as person who worked at a fintech. KYC checks aren’t the most robust and you can brute force the knowledge based authentication if you have enough people’s information. Some of the KBA questions you can google because all the data brokers put people’s past cities online.

But remember: you'll also need to sell the stock after having committed the crime, with all the attention drawn to those getting a big payout.

It will take at least a week for the SEC to make an official request. Funds would have settled and you can call up and wire the money away. Never seen it with stocks but have seen in on deposit accounts. One of the biggest issues with online banks is fake accounts that are used as mule accounts to move stolen money. Authentication in the us is weak and based around SSN and credit history which isn’t hard to buy. Want a billion dollar idea, solve that with out using things like sending a verification code in the mail to an address on active account in the person credit history.

The SEC will find you. I know from experience.

Assuming this is what you went to prison for, is there anything you can tell us about what happened or what the experience was like? Or have you written about it already on HN or anywhere else?

Of course I can understand if you somehow unable or unwilling to talk about it, but I'm really curious and it can't hurt to ask :).

You mean the deep OTM daily put options

Anyway you look at it you'd have the FBI and SEC on your ass in minutes. With Bitcoin nobody's going to really bother.

Recently some banks are using video calls to do KYC checks. You need to hold up your passport while they verify and then Q&A.

Why would you need to be anonymous?

I mean, if you spent $$$$ shorting Tesla stock, then a week later the stock nosedived in response to a tweet and you made a big profit, that doesn't prove you were behind the tweet.

It wouldn't even be illegal, unless there was independent proof you were behind the hack. Without that, you just placed a bet which happened to be a lucky one - just like anyone else who was short Tesla.

> It wouldn't even be illegal

Yes, it would be ... but it would also be hard to prove.

The SEC would _definitely_ have some questions for you in the scenario.

What are they going to ask? Why did you short the most shorted stock in America? Why did you later close your short position, locking in a large profit?

I'd be surprised if that even got you interviewed, let alone searched for hacking tools.

Unless they've fingered you by some other means, in which case it's irrelevant how you were planning to get the money out.

At that point, it's a criminal investigation and everyone on the right side of the trade is a suspect. If you'd made enough to make the risk worthwhile, they'd subpoena everything - phone records, emails, electronics, financial history, contacts, ...

You can easily trace stock trades.

Where does one go to sell or buy DMs like this? I'd like to take a look to see if or when twitter data becomes available.

Most communities that would actually have buyers for high level information are well hidden, you basically have to know someone to get in. I don't know of any sites on TOR that have a marketplace for this kind of high level information, but there's defintely a couple russian marketplaces on i2p. I don't have the links anymore but they're probably somewhere out there on the clear web.

Could explain why this happened during business hours. Data flowing out from servers doesn't look out of place then...

Twitter is 24/7, it's a global company

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