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Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

Apparently the website has been compromised: https://twitter.com/1775Sec/status/421820685766250496

The hackers are also threatening a database leak: https://twitter.com/1775Sec/status/421822727331131392

EDIT: Dropbox's statement is that it's maintainance issues: https://tech.dropbox.com/2014/01/dropbox-status-update/

EDIT2: There is a high probability that the Twitter account is faking the hack, due to the "proof" of the hack being taken from an old dump.

EDIT3: The account admits they did not hack Dropbox, just DDOSed it. https://twitter.com/1775Sec/status/421848589480910848

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I'm thankful there are so many folks out there still doing this sort of thing for "fun" or pure mischieviousness. Imagine how much worse it could be if they tried to be as stealthy as possible, got people downloading a hijacked dropbox service, etc.

Edit: which isn't to say this sort of thing is awesome, but it's a damn sight better than the alternative. These sorts of pranksters are like cow pox, and hopefully they encourage resistance to the real deal.

so, so, true.

Every time a serious hack-and-reveal happens, I wonder how many times it's _already_ happened, by someone who kept it quiet for their own continued use.

I'm reminded of the gawker attack. So much information was revealed to the attackers unwittingly and they had no clue they were hacked, it could have been so much worse, bank accounts could have been drained, sites could have been used to host exploits or malware, etc.

They say they're doing it in honor of Aaron Swartz[0]. (It's the eve of his death).

[0]: https://twitter.com/1775Sec/status/421831664239509504

How does this honor Aaron? Aaron wouldn't have done something like this.

IMO it is just an excuse because people are asking why hack them and sending a lot of hate instead of praise.

What a pathetic excuse. Dropbox is loved and used by many people who depend on it. Their behaviour is disgusting nothing more than that.

Honestly, I'm not sure, and I definitely don't think it's some Aaron would have done.

Well, for one, Dropbox is claiming that it was not a hack at all.

See: http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/10/dropbox-offline-hacker-grou...

and also see dropbox's blog post, explicitly stating that it "was caused during routine internal maintenance, and was not caused by external factors"

https://tech.dropbox.com/

Yeah, I saw the article on TheNextWeb after posting my comment, but I figured I'd leave it up. Either way, I'm happy to hear that Drop Box wasn't compromised.

It's a ridiculous claim.... they want more publicity. Dropbox has done nothing to warrant this attack for 'activism'. Let's hope they don't leak sensitive information if Dropbox reaches out to them and fixes the issue - that would especially be something Aaron wouldn't do.

They also apparently took down the CA DMV site today.

Haha, seriously? Did you really have to use a "citation" for a twitter link in your 10 word comment?[0] Pretentious pseudo-scientific nonsense. Only on hacker news.

[0]: No.

For what it's worth, I write most things in Markdown and I use reference style links[0] by default. So, I tend to do that in comments on Hacker News, but I omit the brackets which would go around the link "value," (i.e. the inner value of the a tag in HTML). Plus, by listing the links under the comment, I find that it's neater and easier to read. And by simply including the links (even if it's just for "a twitter link" in my "10 word comment") it saves other people time because they don't need to search for it themselves.

[0]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#link

When a big site is down, Tweet this:-

We have just compromised the @sitename Website [siteLinkHere] #hacked #compromised

"We are aware that the Dropbox site is currently down. This was caused during routine internal maintenance, and was not caused by external factors. We are working to fix this as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience."

Pathetic people spreading false news. We should shame them publicly. Anyone putting up false news is as guilty as, as shameful as, as fucked up as, as stupid as anyone sabotage security on purpose secretly. We have enough stupid political propaganda full of false statements in the news these days and we don't need more in our tech community on Twitter. What are they? 12 years old? Right, they say "don't feed the trolls."

> We should shame them publicly

Don't give them any more attention.

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