The Fappening: brought to us by the NSA?
56 2014-09-01 by [deleted]
[Discussion started on 4chan's/pol/ board] I thought it was interesting.
What if The Fappening came from NSA employees?
Connect these two dots:
"You've got young enlisted guys, 18 to 22 years old," Snowden said. "They've suddenly been thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility where they now have access to all your private records. In their daily work they stumble across an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising position. But they're extremely attractive. So what do they do? They turn around in their chair and show their co-worker. The co-worker says:
Hey that's great. Send that to Bill.And then Bill sends it to George and George sends it to Tom. And soon this person's whole life has been seen by all these other people. It's never reported. Nobody ever knows about it because the auditing is incredibly weak. The fact that your private images, records of your private lives, records of your intimate moments have been taken from your private communications and given to the government without any specific authorization without any specific need is itself a violation of your rights." Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian's editor-in-chief, then asked: "You saw instances of that happening?" "Yeah," Snowden responded. "Numerous?" "It's routine enough, depending on the company you keep, it could be more or less frequent. These are seen as the fringe benefits of surveillance positions."Revealed: Hacked nude celebrity photos had been on 'deep web' black market for a WEEK - and there could be even more to come http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2739891/Hacked-nude-celebrity-photos-internet-black-market-WEEK-come.html
The hacked nude photographs leaked online have been traded on the Internet for at least a week and could be just the tip of the iceberg of stolen celebrity pictures. Exchanged on the deep web black market and deviant message boards specializing in stolen 'revenge porn' photography, the compromising pictures have been used as a currency of sorts among perverted members of these forums. Indeed, in the aftermath of Sunday's mass dumping of naked pictures, these boards have descended into anarchy and infighting, with a civil war erupting between those who leaked the pictures and those furious their sordid, secret game has been thrown into the public eye.
Now picture those two dots connected thusly:
NSA employees are amassing goldmines of private porn taken from the government's orwellian surveillance matrix [FACT]
NSA employees develop a habit of frenziedly sharing it among themselves [FACT] (heh, picture the surface of a lake "boiling" as the piranhas feast beneath)
One of these employees finally decides to become an hero by copying part of this goldmine to a personal USB stick, sliding that stick up his ass, sneaking it home, and leaking it on a VIP darknet board so he can bask in the glory of .onion dweebs worshipping him as though he's some "mighty hacker" [HIGHLY PLAUSIBLE THEORY]
Until suddenly, one of that board's shittier dweebs decides to try selling copies of that goldmine on the clearweb for BTC [HIGHLY INEVITABLE THEORY]
????????
THE FAPPENING
Why is this plausible? Because consider this. In order to hack an account, you must first know which account you want to hack, by username. So if I want to hack Bob Slob, I have to know that Bob Slob's iCloud is "bslob1974" before I can even try to brute his password. Yet, this celebrity leak fiasco didn't involve just one celebrity, or even five, or even ten. It involved over 100 celebrities. And well, what kind of outside hacker would have the ability to even FIND the usernames of that many celebrities? ESPECIALLY considering most people (including privacy-conscious celebs) create most internet accounts with fake details and pseudonymous usernames like "someslut123"? I mean, even iCloud's own sysadmins would have trouble finding most peoples' accounts if told to search for them only by RL first and last names.
So it's almost like whoever performed this "hack" was someone with a bird's eye view of the whole internet -- someone able to find all those iCloud accounts by username because they already knew who owned every username on every site everywhere to begin with. Another possibility: the "hack" was done by someone who simply ran facial recognition greppers against a bottomless government database of images stolen from social networking company backend servers until accounts with matches (nude matches even) were identified.
Thoughts?
29 comments
23 DJ_Beardsquirt 2014-09-01
I think it's ridiculous how few people are talking about this connection. People seem so eager to rush to the assumption that some super hacker infiltrated iCloud, but they completely forget that we already know of an organization that automatically intercepts all iCloud data and employs people who are known to share images of naked women.
In my mind this is the most plausible explanation for the leak until further evidence is revealed about how the data was acquired.
5 [deleted] 2014-09-01
[deleted]
0 oblivioustoobvious 2014-09-01
Any links to start down that rabbit hole?
1 [deleted] 2014-09-01
[deleted]
8 wantsneeds 2014-09-01
Also, if someone from NSA would have been about to get busted with such pictures, now they can just say they got it off the internet, not from their privileged access to private data.
5 momalloyd 2014-09-01
Now how would we get a virus on to virtually 99% of all computers connected to the Internet in one weekend?
9 [deleted] 2014-09-01
Not necessary, the hardware has backdoors built in. Chinese AND American.
0 litterparakeet 2014-09-01
What places actually use Huawei hardware?
2 [deleted] 2014-09-01
Good question, is it you? I think the issue lies more with the manufacturers.
1 streetyouth 2014-09-01
My phone ;)
4 streetyouth 2014-09-01
Let me go a step forward and say this was plan to attack 4Chan and online anonymity because of their actions in Ferguson
3 know_comment 2014-09-01
It's interesting that "revenge porn" laws are currently (as in over the last 2 months) being proposed and passes in a number of US states.
That seems like a fairly obvious law, but there are censorship implications.
I think the focus here is going to be on the release and reposting of data (nude images in this case), rather than the security of information.
The current conversation about privacy is ridiculous. Our information ISN'T secure. That's the issue- not people reposting or viewing private pictures which have been leaked.
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2 scottonfire 2014-09-01
This is the first time i'm hearing about the 'deep' web. Can you expand on this?
4 DJ_Beardsquirt 2014-09-01
The 'deep' web is just a term for any web page that cannot be accessed from a search engine like Google. The 'deep' web has an unfair reputation for being some super secret hacker hangout, but that's not true at all. In reality you probably visit the deep web every day without even realizing. University and business intranets are part of the deep web, parts of Facebook are the deep web, some Google services are part of the deep web. By some definition the deep web also constitutes parts of the internet that aren't even webpages, if you use that definition bittorrent traffic and Skype traffic are also part of the deep web. It's essentially a meaningless term.
A lot of people confuse the deep web with the Tor network. The Tor network is a network that routes internet traffic in such as way as to do everything possible to keep the users anonymous. There are some websites that can only be accessed on the Tor network and they can be identified by their domain suffix .onion.
2 ganooosh 2014-09-01
to further elaborate on Richmoar's post, encrypted ' secret ' internet. Home to all sorts of grey and black markets.
I've read some post suggesting that there's groups of people who trade these types of pictures and have to have originals of their own to 'buy in' to the group.
-4 [deleted] 2014-09-01
Deep web are just websites that end with the ".onion" instead of ".com" or ".org" or .edu/gov ETC.
You have to access them through the TOR browser from vidalia.
3 OnSpeakerCrab 2014-09-01
That's not a wholly accurate representation, but only part of what the "deep web" consists of.
1 [deleted] 2014-09-01
I know what the deepweb is but how else do you explain it to someone "just hearing about it"?
2 OnSpeakerCrab 2014-09-01
You have to give them the broad definition and some supplemental learning material (i.e external links to various sites explaining what you are talking about). Let them develop their own conclusions. If you point them in any one way you can be called out, but more importantly, the person you are talking to will develop disinterest because they believe you are catering to a belief and not their self.
1 [deleted] 2014-09-01
Thats what independent research is all about then.
-6 [deleted] 2014-09-01
[deleted]
3 [deleted] 2014-09-01
Then perhaps you should have tried answering /u/scottonfire question instead of attacking me.
-2 [deleted] 2014-09-01
[deleted]
2 [deleted] 2014-09-01
I did not create this theory I brought it here from elsewhere because I thougth it interesting....
2 youngthoughts 2014-09-01
had this thought straight away...
2 Ambiguously_Ironic 2014-09-01
Definitely possible.
1 hollanug 2014-09-01
Never trust the nerds on the other sides of the computer screens at major companies with your private stuff, and as we saw today, bits.
1 Kaisernegro 2014-09-01
Jesus christ i just had that thought. lol
1 88x3 2014-09-01
There are many Snowdens at the NSA, its been a theme in many articles and isnt suprising. I remember when Snowdens leaks came out...so did his nudes...its a secret frat ring or something.
0 oblivioustoobvious 2014-09-01
Any links to start down that rabbit hole?