Still standing
blog.4chan.org
blog.4chan.org
Given the language in this announcement that lays blame at everyone else's feet except the people responsible for maintaining the platform, I'm pretty sure that no lessons were learned, and that the security is not likely to improve beyond whatever bandaids that were needed to address this hack.
In software outdated dependencies are vulnerabilities. The tech leadership knew this tradeoff and closed their eyes and hoped they'd get to it before someone else did. They did not and you shouldn't expect to be able to either.
If you do not have the resources to support the continual, ongoing updating of a dep, you do not the resources to add said dep.
I have never heard of a bank’s core mainframes being hacked in the last decade (outside of pen tests), even for mid size banks outside the global top 100.
In 2017: > More than 40% of the population of America was potentially impacted by the Equifax data breach.
In 2022: > In September 2022, Optus experienced a major data breach that exposed the personal information of millions of customers
That's just 2 off the top of my head.
i.e. what they actually might spend millions of dollars per week on securing.
Everything else outside of that… banks obviously have incentives to cut security spending to as low as possible.
The claim was “ Get real. Companies with infinitely more money, staff, and robust security practices are hacked every day. ”
Banking core mainframes are the only thing I know of that gets anwhere near that kind of claim in terms of money, staff, and “robust security practices” 24/7/365.
And even then it’s far from infinite.
The fact is I provided a fairly comprehensive list of hacks and breaches, many coming from large public companies that spend more in a year on security than 4chan brings in for ad revenue in a decade.
Hence my point.
Are you even fully reading my comments?
If you only meant that your claim applies only within an upper limit of say 1000x… saying “infinitely more” is obviously going to mislead some fraction of the readerbase.
I don't think advertisers, payment providers, service providers, or hardware vendors told 4chan what version of OpenBSD to run or how often to update packages. Those are tasks that require time and effort, yes, but they're not herculean. They could have been done. I think laziness and disinterest are the more likely reasons.
"I'm pretty sure that no lessons were learned." I would bet that was the case.
Wow, this is a pretty incredible level of incompetence. Server-side SWF exploits are easily mitigated, unless they are using some sort of server-side SWF interpreter, which is absolutely not needed if you implement client-side Ruffle (or just require people to install the browser extension).
They can complain all they want that advertisers and payment processors refuse to work with them, but it's clear that no competent engineers want to work with them either if they're saying stuff like this.
> Ruffle
Yes, they used that. Take a look at the board.
I remember visiting the site as a teenager to check rage comics, and even for the abrasion of the internet of the time it was too shocking for anything beyond an occasional look - random gore, pictures of underage girls, racist tirades and the like.
I know some people enjoy that Wild West, lack of rules environment for some reason, but is there any content that’s worth it for those who don’t?
Like the ACLU used to do, we should help them stay online and exercising their free speech, even if it is annoying and gross.
Excellent, now we can ban speech we don’t like by just saying it doesn’t actually express a point of view
Hopefully, that works. It's the first time I've done an archive like that. It works for me, but it always did because I'm using the Bypass Paywalls Clean add-on in Firefox https://gitflic.ru/project/magnolia1234/bpc_uploads
Alex Jones would like a word with you.
Why did you bring him up here? Do you think his being punished for profiting off of the defamation of school children is a violation of his first amendment rights?
As the article I linked points out, that trope was (and still is) a hypothetical that tells us nothing useful about first amendment speech rights. The reason the article is so valuable and often cited is when one of those first amendment tropes is tossed into a discussion, it's usually to imply some specific speech which is protected - is not protected. They are often deployed either in error by those who don't understand how very narrow and incredibly rare first amendment exceptions actually are, or as a bad faith rhetorical device by those who already know the first amendment protects speech they wish it didn't.
As a student and fan of first amendment jurisprudence, the fascinating thing about the tropes is that most of them come from old, exceptional cases where the court got it wrong. Cases which were either reversed by later courts or so thoroughly disavowed they've never come back before the court. A long time ago, various eras of SCOTUS courts wobbled around in the long process of figuring out first amendment exceptions and some bad decisions were made - then later corrected. After decades of trying (and failing) to work out a set of rules permitting "good speech" while stopping "bad speech", it became obvious it was impossible.
Over the past 50 years or so, SCOTUS narrowed in on a detailed set of precedents which are as consistent and crystal clear as they are radically extreme - always protecting almost ALL speech - including the worst, most vile, offensive and hateful speech that has no redeeming value whatsoever. Speech I personally despise and wish no one ever said. While I hate the speech (and, often, the speaker), I fiercely defend the first amendment which protects it. Tolerating the awful things people I dislike do with their rights is the price of still having those rights when we need them most. After all those decades of trial and error, in the end, I think SCOTUS finally got it just about perfect.
So the next time you feel like hauling out the "fire... crowded theater" thing, consider instead just saying "The goddamn first amendment fully and absolutely protects this offensive, vile, bullshit speech - and I hate that these assholes said this shit because it's wrong - and here's why..." This would have the benefit of very likely being correct regarding the first amendment and I'd totally respect your feelings and even probably agree with you.
The line between what is permissible and not subject to control and what may be made impermissible and subject to regulation is the line between ideas and overt acts.
The example usually given by those who would punish speech is the case of one who falsely shouts fire in a crowded theatre.
This is, however, a classic case where speech is brigaded with action. See Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 536—537, 78 S.Ct. 1332, 1346, 2 L.Ed.2d 1460 (Douglas, J., concurring.) They are indeed inseparable and a prosecution can be launched for the overt acts actually caused. Apart from rare instances of that kind, speech is, I think, immune from prosecution.
As TFA helpfully points out, defamation is outside First Amendment protection.
Defamation is by definition unprotected speech, but in the US the legal criteria of what is protected and unprotected speech fundamentally revolve around the First Amendment. The courts, part of the government, enforce civil disputes. The First Amendment applies to civil lawsuits which would directly or indirectly restrict or compel speech.
Alex Jones met the criteria for defamation in multiple civil cases because he spread false statements (conspiracy theories, to be clear), he ignored every indication that his statements were false (in a way that I believe fulfills at least the "reckless disregard of whether it was false or not" branch of the actual malice standard established in Sullivan [1]), and his statements harmed the families reputations (to the point where people motivated by or hiding behind his lies threatened the families [2] and defaced at least one victim's grave [3]).
Disclaimer: I personally believe that Alex Jones knew his statements were false and spread them anyway (the "with knowledge that it was false" branch of actual malice).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones
[3] https://apnews.com/article/alex-jones-infowars-bankruptcy-sa...
I agree that we need laws to make "yelling fire and causing stampedes" illegal. I do not agree that "free speech requires an intent to express a point of view" is the correct way of implementing this.
If 4chan were taken down by government action, I might be inclined to speak up for them in some capacity, as I don't consider that anything 4chan is currently doing illegal, but that's not the situation here. If 4chan dies because it's a poorly-managed shithole with no allies, then we can and should let it die, and rest easy knowing that it wasn't censored, it collapsed under it's own debt.
I'd be more interested knowing which package was vulnerable?, was it a known exploit?, and what systems were/are in place to alert on vulnerable dependencies?. Instead they are focused on the new servers just taking too long and not enough money because of advertiser pressures.
If that's were case, it would be easy to see how they might want to tie their OS upgrade to a hardware refresh rather than taking servers offline for a reinstall.
It won't matter for long though. The userbase has had its trust shattered, and this blogpost makes it clear that 4chan has no ability to defend itself from future attacks, which are absolutely coming.
I think it’s moreso that when a normal person enters 4chan they either decide to get out while they still can or stay and become whatever the opposite of a “normie” is.
Wouldn’t say the latter sounds like it would be worth it at all though.
They should, in fact, give up and use the time for literally anything else.