Ron Schenone

Twitter Hacked – Oh No, Mister Bill!

Posted by on Jul 15, 2009 | 5 Comments

Over at TechCrunch they have their hands on some 300 documents that were allegedly stolen from Twitter and Twitter employees. A hacker known only as ‘Hacker Croll’ sent a zip file containing the documents to TechCrunch, which are going to publish some of the documents that they feel is newsworthy.

On their site they also state:

Let’s put aside the highly sensitive documents that we aren’t going to publish, but which will likely end up on the Internet anyway. We’re not going to post that information whether we have the legal right to or not. No discussion is needed.

But we are going to publish some of the other information that is relevant to Twitter’s business, particularly product notes and financial projections. Many users say this is “stolen” information and therefore shouldn’t be published. We disagree.

We publish confidential information almost every day on TechCrunch. This is stuff that is also “stolen,” usually leaked by an employee or someone else close to the company, and the company is very much opposed to its publication. In the past we’ve received comments that this is unethical. And it certainly was unethical, or at least illegal or tortious, for the person who gave us the information and violated confidentiality and/or nondisclosure agreements. But on our end, it’s simply news.

There is no doubt in any-one’s mind that these are in fact stolen documents. To print this information rewards the hacker for his thievery. Saying the information is newsworthy or simply news begs to answer news to whom? I don’t stay up at nights worrying about what Twitter is or isn’t doing.

But there is one thing about this stolen information that is of concern. This information was stored in a cloud environment which illustrates how insecure the cloud can be. I am of the opinion that I would not store any sensitive information on the cloud. But that is just me.

What do you think? Should this stuff be published or not? What about cloud security? Should we be concerned?

Comments welcome.

TechCrunch source #1

TechCrunch source #2

  • Mike

    Old new is Old, this was done way back in like, feb. and lol@”hacker” the dude social networked the password from someone.

  • mhz

    You’ve got to love the reasoning.

    “And it certainly was unethical, or at least illegal or tortious,…But on our end, it’s simply news.”

    How about this one:

    “TechCrunch headquarters burglarized, all employee personal information posted on the web.”

    Would that just make him say, “Sweet– you got us. Nice job.”

    Apparently this company believes that once something is stolen, it is public property. So real crimes like “receiving stolen property” really just don’t exist in his world.

    Tell me something, is there any good reason why any of us should do business in any way whatsoever with companies who talk like that? You do know that if your friend will talk about others behind their back, then he’ll talk about you too, right? So can a company that prides itself on distributing stolen property be trusted for ANYTHING AT ALL?

    A company like that would probably install spyware through its web pages, saying “Hey, we’re just opportunistic, you know?” Good grief. Some people will do anything for a buck.

  • zenium

    Since the cloud started to emerge I been struggling with why people want to store sensitive information in the cloud.

    My conclusion, they have yet to understand that the cloud is not a safe place for important sensitive information, unless the cloud provider has gone to extreme measures to safe guard if for you. And most have not.

  • Ignoreland

    I really wouldn’t trust the ‘cloud’ with any data, personally. The idea of handing your data storage over to a third party doesn’t make sense. Why store you files on a server farm 100 miles away when you can keep on your own personal HD which is only as insecure as you allow it to be. Even if it’s illegal, once they have your data, you can’t *stop* them from doing whatever they want with it- short of annihilating every last server they have. And sharing sites tend to delete things that get old, or for any other reason really. I suppose part of this stems from a time when the internet wasn’t as accessible as it is today. I knew if I wanted to see something again, I’d better save it to my HD. I really don’t see why the cloud is even necessary; since storage media continues to go down in price and physical size and up in storage capacity.

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