And where was my millions of re-tweets when I posted this story last night? (see http://bit.ly/XWFXh ). but serously things like twittermeme work on the number of re-tweets a post gets and so it's only a matter of time before someone writes a script to use these fake accounts to big-up a story on twittermeme.
Mike Chelen
· 5 months ago
Any services that automatically trusts all accounts without qualification is vulnerable to exploitation.
gollygee
· 5 months ago
"...asking for exploitation" -fixed
iTbay
· 5 months ago
tweeted 16 hrs ago: rt @louisgray One need only see the top trending topic on Twitter now to recognize at times, the inmates run the asylum. Embarrassing.
If we look at the actual size of a gorilla penis, per http://www.penissizedebate.com/page11_gorilla-c... , its the smallest (about an inch and a half when erected!). This explains why these nerds actually pull this stuff off - they cant get laid!
Richard C. Mongler
· 5 months ago
I guess I'd have to wonder the same about someone who spends their time googling pictures of gorilla penises. or would the plural use actually be peni?
Revil
· 5 months ago
"peni" fucking A
Whipsmart McCoy
· 5 months ago
It's a mistake to label these accounts "fake" when they're created by real people for the real purpose of peeing in the pool. Twitter is as much for miscreants as it is for statesmen. Let's not kid ourselves by ignoring the parcel of society that takes strange pleasure in creating upheaval.
Just a nitpick, but be aware that idiocy isn't and shouldn't be restricted to "real life."
Libes
· 5 months ago
This is not round 1 this is actually round 2.
Check @basementdad mashfag
Vygantas
· 5 months ago
Rule 1 and 2
Scott Herbert
· 5 months ago
Rule 3) No one cares about your rules. Rule 4) NO ONE cares about your rules.
Stan_Schroeder
· 5 months ago
Ok, let's call that the warmup, this was the real round one (;.
Revil
· 5 months ago
I hope next time "closed pools" and "aids" will be involved ;).
barryallard
· 5 months ago
As the attention singularity of ignoring each other completely in public nears.... sentitient spam will grow legs and chase unsuspecting consumers down the street until they buy ED medications or download ringtones. :)
Mike McDermott
· 5 months ago
I think I may have unknowingly been part of that craziness last night. I logged in to Twitter and my account was suspended. I "petitioned" to have it released and the petition was closed with no notes. I petitioned again and this morning my account was released, but with no email of what had ever transpired. Needless to say, I changed my password and hope that this does not become a problem across the board with Twitter.
yanjm
· 5 months ago
Why am I not surprised that some people still have nothing better to do online except wreak havoc?
Matt
· 5 months ago
Why do people have nothing better to do than go on stupid sites like Twitter and Facebook?
Meloncita
· 5 months ago
Owned?
Stephen Robinson
· 5 months ago
Its pathetic really, someone should do it to them.
Conor
· 5 months ago
They do. Frequently. Do not speak of things you do not understand.
anon
· 2 months ago
be careful what you say when you use a name, Stephen.
shortformblog
· 5 months ago
Actually, it's Round Two. They were responsible for a Rick-Astley-is-dead prank a week and a half ago. It didn't get huge play because it happened in the middle of the night EST, but it involved a faux iReport article and was a top trending topic for a bit.
Twitter reminds me of the early days search engines (Altavista,Excite,Infoseek..), when popularity was a two edge sword - the more popular the service is, the more interesting it is to exploit it. Google over the years did an amazing job dealing with these type of attempts. I'm afraid Twitter doesn't have the engineering power required to handle these attacks - it seems like they have people sitting down trying to manually identify possible exploits of the service. They need automatic 'fraud detection' processes.
G
· 5 months ago
4chan, the scum of internet. Home of pedophiles and assorted weirdos. What else could anyone expect from such people?
dontworryboutit
· 5 months ago
faggot, you forgot furries, dumbass
James
· 5 months ago
You realize that the screenshot of the "Insurgency Wiki" that Cnet's Harrison displayed on their website says right on it "Brought to you by Ebaum's World", which is not 4chan.
I'm sure 4chan is enjoying the credit you are incorrectly giving them, though.
Scott Herbert
· 5 months ago
but James, 4Chan tend to credit Ebaum's World for everything and wiki said "post this all over 4chan" so who's likely to do it? 4Chan...
gollygee
· 5 months ago
that site doesn't do raids anymore, moot said so, don't bother him about it.
Just a random person
· 5 months ago
They definitely won't be doing it anymore. A raid was made on /b/ recently by ANOTHER site 4chan is at war with, GaiaOnline. I think a few thousand people raided, and it helped close the site. So, long story short, 4chan is closed down.
Liz
· 5 months ago
It only took Twitter 2 1/2 hours to nip this in the bud which isn't too bad for a Sunday afternoon on the July 4th holiday weekend. Smart timing for an attack would have been the morning when the West Coast was still in bed.
Anonymous
· 5 months ago
James is right, I don't think it was 4Chan: http://partyvan.info/wiki/Away_Mission_Gorillap... (shudder, scroll past the ugly image). It looks like that they might have been crediting EBaum's World as misdirection, too.
I don't understand why they're doing this s***? I would understand a MySpace attack but Twitter? ^^
Miramon
· 5 months ago
If it's possible for a small group of 4chan people to hose Twitter in any way whatsoever, that just points out problems inherent to Twitter. These people aren't evil hackers using vast botnets, they're just kids playing around. Sure, their behavior is a little bit irresponsible -- (honestly it seems vastly preferable to simple pranks like egg-throwing in real life) -- but if the service was better designed, such "attacks" wouldn't be possible in the first place.
Revil
· 5 months ago
Twitter is Fail and deserves the spam, seeing #gorillapenis make the top of the trend topics was the best thing to ever happen to twitter. Let's hope it happens again.
r0cketman22
· 5 months ago
Anything that is popular in the mainstream is "Fail," right?
Revil
· 5 months ago
Doesn't have to Twitter is a good idea, but Twitter is fail because all it is is morons retweeting the same boring crap over and over and over and over and over and over again. Whenever I see someone tweeting something about their unbelievably mundane lives I want to become an hero.
Mike Chelen
· 5 months ago
As mundane as it is, unfollowing may be the better choice :p
Revil
· 5 months ago
I forgot to mention all the spammers.
Anim00ted
· 5 months ago
RULES 1 AND 2.
Ryan Freed
· 5 months ago
Twitter is becoming a spammers tool. Although it is very useful for marketing, targeting your correct niche of customers is very difficult. To many people follow you that are not at all interested in your tweets or are just looking to spam. Does anyone think that spammers will become uncontrollable, despite twitter handling the prank fairly well?
Mike Chelen
· 5 months ago
It's a serious issue for them, less due to such sporadic pranks, more as the constant spammers create issues for users daily.
sull
· 5 months ago
twitter singup is so "dumb" to spammers. it is too easy to get an account. you dont even need to confirm via email. i have a hard time understanding why they have not tightened this up.
also, to make things more difficult for spammers, twitter may need to force one email per domain unless the domain is whitelisted. whitelisting can be as simple as an email to twitter same as api whitelisting. then you cannot create hundreds/thousands of accounts on twitter unless you have hundreds/thousands of domains to utilize for the attack. popular mail services like gmail, yahoo, hotmail will be whitelisted but the spammer can register multiple accounts on all of those services but it would take more effort and not be as effective. i bet the attacks we see, like this latest one, mostly use only a few domains with fake email addresses.
twitter has no excuse at this point not to tighten up their service to prevent this ease of abuse.
and get rid of the trending topics sidebar until things are drastically improved. it should be embarassing for them to have some of those bogus topics right there for every user to see... children, grandparents, new users trying to use this thing everyone keeps talking about etc. yeah, email has spam but email is not a company. twitter is.
@sull
gollygee
· 5 months ago
these are old problems... that have been solved before. the fact that Tweeter chose to ignore and provide an easily exploitable service is the issue.
Tony
· 5 months ago
Ehhh who cares about 4chan, there just a bunch of 13 year olds that like to masturbate a lot
As for twitter, they should have a person designated just for the trending topics, so the person with that jobs filters spam trends, and they can group trending topics up ( Ex: MJ and Michael jackson should be combined as one topic)
lilhunter
· 5 months ago
Ya'll fags either need to fvck off and die, or rule 1 & 2 niggers
networkmania
· 5 months ago
"I think it's unlikely they are related, the 4Chan attack used newly formed accounts (for the most part) and by the sounds of it at least some of the accounts suspended are old accounts."
These stories are over exaggerated and the whole scheme is a deliberate attempt to gain more press for 4chan, so the admin can make some extra money from the increased traffic. The users are mostly troubled teenagers so it's unlikely they realize they are being used as spammers, instead they see themselves as rulers of the internet. The forum is anonymous based so who knows who started it all (the admins of the site cough).
"In February 2009 the Washingon Post reported that moot had attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia for a few semesters before dropping out. It reported that moot was living with his mother while looking for a way to make money from owning 4chan."
gollygee
· 5 months ago
"so the admin can make some extra money from the increased traffic." pretty dumb man. that site loses money as traffic increases. Ads come nowhere near the cost of bandwidth. If a site like that could turn a profit there would be a lot of copycat sites jumping on the bandwagon as it is moot is awesome but an incredible business failure.
"troubled teenagers so it's unlikely they realize they are being used as spammers" either trolling or a giant retard.
led display
· 5 months ago
seemingly orchestrated an attack on Twitter
ThisIsRoundā
· 5 months ago
Stan Schroeder: You are the definition of newfag.
Anon
· 5 months ago
Hackers on steroids
Xlax
· 5 months ago
Twitter is the most pointless website same with facebook and myspace and 4chan... No body needs to know when you take a crap what you had to eat what your doing every waking moment of everyday
Xlax
· 5 months ago
Twitter is the most pointless website same with facebook and myspace and 4chan... No body needs to know when you take a crap what you had to eat what your doing every waking moment of everyday
dontworryboutit
· 5 months ago
hey dumbfuck, 4chan isnt behind this, havent you noticed 4chan has been down jeez your a fucking genius
Fawx
· 5 months ago
Hey now, not all of us who go to 4chan are twittertackers. Believe it or not, there's a difference between a 4channer and a /b/tard. Some of us just go there for the porn and possibly a bite of creepypasta.
Meloncita
· 5 months ago
It's just twitter! Who gives a monkey's butt what you are up to?
newfag
· 5 months ago
lawl at all the newfags bawing about rules 1 and 2. lurk moar, faggots.
MonsterBuzz
· 5 months ago
Gosh. I guess they should think a better activity than this. Don't mess other people efforts. You love war, do it between you.
I got a lot of nice information thru Twitter and I feel very sad to know that there are some people misuse this nice service.
MonsterBuzz
· 5 months ago
Gosh. I guess they should think a better activity than this. Don't mess other people efforts. You love war, do it between you.
I got a lot of nice information thru Twitter and I feel very sad to know that there are some people misuse this nice service.
All Comments
-fixed
If we look at the actual size of a gorilla penis, per http://www.penissizedebate.com/page11_gorilla-c... , its the smallest (about an inch and a half when erected!). This explains why these nerds actually pull this stuff off - they cant get laid!
Just a nitpick, but be aware that idiocy isn't and shouldn't be restricted to "real life."
Check @basementdad mashfag
Rule 4) NO ONE cares about your rules.
I petitioned again and this morning my account was released, but with no email of what had ever transpired. Needless to say, I changed my password and hope that this does not become a problem across the board with Twitter.
I posted about it when it happened:
http://shortformblog.com/culture/note-to-twitte...
Google over the years did an amazing job dealing with these type of attempts.
I'm afraid Twitter doesn't have the engineering power required to handle these attacks - it seems like they have people sitting down trying to manually identify possible exploits of the service. They need automatic 'fraud detection' processes.
I'm sure 4chan is enjoying the credit you are incorrectly giving them, though.
h3 can't hack twiitt3r:!..
it is too easy to get an account. you dont even need to confirm via email.
i have a hard time understanding why they have not tightened this up.
also, to make things more difficult for spammers, twitter may need to force one email per domain unless the domain is whitelisted. whitelisting can be as simple as an email to twitter same as api whitelisting.
then you cannot create hundreds/thousands of accounts on twitter unless you have hundreds/thousands of domains to utilize for the attack.
popular mail services like gmail, yahoo, hotmail will be whitelisted but the spammer can register multiple accounts on all of those services but it would take more effort and not be as effective. i bet the attacks we see, like this latest one, mostly use only a few domains with fake email addresses.
twitter has no excuse at this point not to tighten up their service to prevent this ease of abuse.
and get rid of the trending topics sidebar until things are drastically improved. it should be embarassing for them to have some of those bogus topics right there for every user to see... children, grandparents, new users trying to use this thing everyone keeps talking about etc. yeah, email has spam but email is not a company. twitter is.
@sull
As for twitter, they should have a person designated just for the trending topics, so the person with that jobs filters spam trends, and they can group trending topics up ( Ex: MJ and Michael jackson should be combined as one topic)
These stories are over exaggerated and the whole scheme is a deliberate attempt to gain more press for 4chan, so the admin can make some extra money from the increased traffic. The users are mostly troubled teenagers so it's unlikely they realize they are being used as spammers, instead they see themselves as rulers of the internet. The forum is anonymous based so who knows who started it all (the admins of the site cough).
"In February 2009 the Washingon Post reported that moot had attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia for a few semesters before dropping out. It reported that moot was living with his mother while looking for a way to make money from owning 4chan."
pretty dumb man. that site loses money as traffic increases. Ads come nowhere near the cost of bandwidth. If a site like that could turn a profit there would be a lot of copycat sites jumping on the bandwagon as it is moot is awesome but an incredible business failure.
"troubled teenagers so it's unlikely they realize they are being used as spammers"
either trolling or a giant retard.
jeez your a fucking genius
I got a lot of nice information thru Twitter and I feel very sad to know that there are some people misuse this nice service.
I got a lot of nice information thru Twitter and I feel very sad to know that there are some people misuse this nice service.