MyBART Hacked By Anonymous | Hacker News Reader

MyBART Hacked By Anonymous

djmash.at

60 pointsllambda32 comments

Let me get this straight. Anon claims the government doesn't give a fuck about me. So they come in and punch me in the face, and then say, "see, the government didn't care about you". This is like walking up to a person who's getting raped, and kicking them in the head while they're down.

How does further abusing the citizens somehow make the original point that the government is abusing the citizens?

Here's a pro-tip, Anon. If you are really interested in "fighting abuse" by the government, then don't further aggravate the situation. Do something that resembles fighting back, or somehow protects the people getting abused.

Why do you think leaving this unpublished would have made the data any more private?

Privacy is a matter of visibility, not compromisability. Ultimately, almost anything you do can be observed, shared, and exploited. The reason we lead any semblance of a private life is a combination of a lack of interest, goodwill, and a low reward/cost ratio.

Publishing this data like this puts it on google and in the media. That makes it a.) highly visible and b.) extremely cheap. Therefore, less private.

Way to miss the point, Anon. In one of the incidents they talked about the suspect did have a gun and reportedly did shoot at police. I mean seriously, do they really think the police are in the habit of shooting people over fare evasion?

I'm no fan of police, and I support protest groups - but there's a difference between protesters with a grievance, and hooligans looking for an excuse. From what I've seen, previous BART protests have been more the latter than the former.

I am sick and tired of "anarchists" subjugating every legitimate cause under the sun so they can have an excuse to deface and destroy. Not only is what they do juvenile and unproductive, but their presence taints what are otherwise very legitimate and important grievances and seriously compromises public opinion and support of these causes.

There is not a single group I despise more than your average black bloc "anarchist protester". I'm disappointed (but unsurprised) that Anon has confused real protesters with these guys, too.

Knife.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/bay-area/2011/07/bart-shooti...

I am no fan of black bloc. I feel they rob anarchism of legitimacy. However, I don't believe they've conducted as many public executions as BART police officers have.

Your post is incomplete - you feel black bloc tactics rob anarchism or legitimacy. You also note that black bloc protesters have not executed anyone.

So... what's your point? Those two observations are entirely unrelated, unless you're trying to use one to justify the other and set up a straw man.

Yeah, ok, BART cops suck and kill people without justification (that's arguable, but let's run with that for now). What part of that justifies the rampaging, destructive "protests" we've seen out of BART/MUNI as of late? Hooliganism is okay because cops are assholes?

I miss the days when the word "protester" didn't conjure up images of hoodied and masked people smashing windows and burning cars. If protesting is to remain a legitimate method of civil discourse and disobedience, black bloc people and tactics must be opposed at every level, no matter how heinous the crime they supposedly "protest" against. From a pragmatist's perspective - giving black bloc types any quarter is public opinion suicide.

I'm sorry. I'll try to be more clear. You said There is not a single group I despise more than your average black bloc "anarchist protester". I feel that murderers are more deserving of contempt than children who destroy property.

That reeks of straw man to me - murderers aren't a group, they do not represent themselves as such, or anything even remotely close to it. They don't issue statements, they don't have meetings, and they certainly do not descend upon anything as a group.

Until there's a "SF Murder Collective" that descends in terror across the city, I will stand by my opinion that, as a group, black bloc "anarchists" are by far my most despised.

They purport to stand against oppressors, but in reality they get nothing of the sort done, and instead they play directly into the agenda of heavy-handed policing by justifying police reactions in the court of public opinion.

I think the murderers he's referring to are the BART police officers

Ah, that would make more sense. Unfortunately my mind wasn't in "hyperbolic rhetoric" mode.

> I am sick and tired of "anarchists" subjugating every legitimate cause under the sun so they can have an excuse to deface and destroy. Not only is what they do juvenile and unproductive, but their presence taints what are otherwise very legitimate and important grievances and seriously compromises public opinion and support of these causes.

If they're actually anarchists---as in those who despise governance in any form--its absolutely appropriate that they attack all the arms of the government, even the innocuous ones that do nothing but bring joy and happiness into the lives of people.

Makes absolutely no sense. MyBART isn't even related to BART, its a site to find activities that you can take the BART to.

Of course, I don't expect much more from Anonymous.

I believe it's run by BART, but it's basically just a groupon-ish service for cross-promotions between local businesses and BART.

Incredibly lame, either way.

These sort of actions always seem to me like, "See, I was able to enter your home at night and punch you in the face. Now you know how bad your police are at defending you. I'm making you aware of this for your own good."

Gee. Thanks.

More like "See, I was able to enter your house. Now I'm going to mail a copy of the key to thousands if not millions of people. Oh, and since you probably use the same key for your house, office, and car, they'll also have access to those. But it's not my fault. It's the government's."

...but I get your point. :-)

They didn't just choose anyplace, though. They specifically chose the mybart site because of the BART's recent actions. They even say this on the page. That is very different.

This is really pathetic by anon. They are exposing normal people's user names and passwords that now anyone can use with bad intentions on other sites. This isn't an "f you" to Bart, it's hurting normal people.

Side note, Bart shouldn't be storing these passwords as plain text...

Since the data was relatively unsecured, why do you think that only now, after being published, it'll be used with bad intentions?

Because if you hand a burglar the key to a home, he's far more likely to steal from that home than any other one, even if another had the door left wide open.

They want to help the people. OK. Then they publish their user data (including passwords) to demonstrate their childish pride. NOT OK. The hacker children don't do it right. They don't understand that their own quality of life is still depending on the very existing government and institutions that are existing. They don't dare to cherish what exists and it seems that they want to rush into a new war. But they are trapped in the net that they didn't create.

What exactly does it solve to list customer contact info from mybart.gov?

They're hurting BART's (security) reputation at the expense of innocent bystanders.

Definitely a strange choice, as many people have said. Missed the mark by a longshot, but if some media outlets get on this you might have a handful of already angry/frustrated people getting even more angry/frustrated at BART for exactly what was described here.

Although this is yet another example of golfclap-worthy choices made by those tasked with implementing the security of a government or government-affiliated website. Presumably utype_id of 0 has some unique quality, given that there are only two of them and they both have the only ids under ten thousand:

Name: Partner Partner Email: partner@interactivate.com Password: partner

Name: dev team Email: devteam@interactivate.com Password: admin123

Please excuse the mote of speculation involved in this, as I can't be certain that anything is indeed special about those accounts. But these days, if there is anything at all unique or administrative about those accounts, you can't encounter passwords like that and expect the site to be well-designed or secure in other areas.

Definitely a strange choice

I think it was (as it usually is) more of an opportunity than a choice.

True enough. Much like how LulzSec's government targets were rural police forces and the like, with little in the way of security considerations.

Without going into the ethics or the police action I am guessing that BART paid a sizable sum to get the website done by a company that can't protect against SQL injections.

This reminds me of my building's condo board paying 30k for a "community portal" website that could've been done in one afternoon (and still wasn't done right).

They also defaced their website: http://i.imgur.com/whglp.png

It also seems like they may have replaced some of the questions and answers in their FAQ - either that or the person who originally wrote the questions was amazingly snarky, especially with the ones near the bottom of the list (the last item on the list is a link to Anon's page, which supports this hypothesis).

They got your attention, that's all they want.

Man, I remember 10 years ago SQL injection was a thing for 14-year-old teenagers to waste time on. I guess they grew up and call themselves hackers these days. But, to be on topic, i really hope these people enjoy having their personal information displayed by a gang of internet criminals. Justice served!

exposing "civilian"'s private data doesn't help their PR

no soup for you!

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