
Hacked Twitter Accounts Post Swastikas, Pro-Erdogan Content - Avalyst
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-15/twitter-accounts-appear-to-be-hacked-with-swastikas-and-pro-erdogan-content
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r721
TheCounter‏: "We're aware that our service was hacked and have started an
investigation into the matter.We've already taken measures to contain such
abuse"

[https://twitter.com/thecounter/status/841935867925139458](https://twitter.com/thecounter/status/841935867925139458)

"This isn't TwitterCounter's first time. It's happened before. If you rely on
it, it's time to pick better tools."

[https://twitter.com/FR314/status/841925814417555460](https://twitter.com/FR314/status/841925814417555460)

[http://press.twittercounter.com/139716-twitter-counter-
accou...](http://press.twittercounter.com/139716-twitter-counter-accounts-
secured-following-a-hack)

UPD TheCounter‏: "Assuming this abuse is indeed done using our system, we’ve
blocked all ability to post tweets and changed our Twitter app key."

[https://twitter.com/thecounter/status/841941624238284800](https://twitter.com/thecounter/status/841941624238284800)

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simias
What does this service do exactly? Why does it need to have write access to
the account if it's only a stat thing?

~~~
dodge141415
Looks like they run a followers scam as well with the promoted twitter
account. How can they guarantee 1% views conversion. They probably make
accounts that sign up for their service secretly follow the promoted accounts.

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lawless123
Someone is very interested in pushing people towards far right pro-kremlim
parties in Europe right before elections..

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tomp
I wouldn't be that sure - the tensions escalated before today's Dutch
elections, but the cause of the escalation was the _current_ ruling party (the
PM banned some turkish gatherings/protests, and then blocked a Turkish
minister's plane from landing in the Netherlands). So one could argue that the
mainstream party tried to woo right-wing-ish voters by taking a stronger
stance against Turks/muslims.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
The stance taken wasn't against Turks or Muslims though. It was against an
authoritarian ruler campaigning in another country to grab even more power for
himself.

~~~
raverbashing
Exactly this

The one with dictatorial tendencies here is Erdogan

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teekert
I agree, but the PM (Rutte) and his party are definitely benefiting. He had
many opportunities before to go harder on Erdogan i.e. when Erdogan bought oil
from IS but "we" needed him to keep refugees out of Europe.

The stance is certainly not against Muslims although people might feel it that
way. It is against the fact the pro-Erdogan Turks and anti-Erdogan Turks and
Curds etc cause unrest in the Netherlands. Most people are welcoming of other
cultures but not when they bring their political unrest with them. This whole
circus was a signal to Turkey to keep Turkish politics within Turkey. Still,
I'm certain our PM would have been less strong if there weren't any elections.

I don't understand Erdogan though, he called on the dutch Turks to not vote
for the current PM and Geert Wilders (PVV, far right, anti immigration, pro
Netherlands), and now this?! He must know that the couple of Turks that will
listen to this will be overwhelmed by Dutchies wanting to vote anything that
Erdogan doesn't like... It's like he is intentionally putting oil on the fire,
helping PVV. Why is the very important questions, what does he or some other
party have to gain? Who benefits from poor EU/Turkey relations?

Edit: after thinking some more: Of course Erdogan is the one who benefits
greatly from the created "us against them sentiment" of the Turks. It
distracts from all the turmoil and the approaching power grab.

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the_why_of_y
Putting oil on the fire is a core part of Erdoğan's strategy. He's afraid that
not enough Turks will vote in a couple weeks for the constitutional reform
that will establish himself as dictator for life, so he has been trying to
stoke nationalist resentment against EU countries for the last months, so that
when they respond to his provocations he can represent himself as defender of
the Turkish nation from outside attacks.

Erdoğan never missed an opportunity to escalate the situation.

The German government remained mostly calm despite numerous incidents such as
preventing government officials from visiting German soldiers stationed in
Turkey, the frivolous lawsuit where German citizen and journalist Deniz Yücel
is accused of "terrorism", threats of sanctions for preventing public speeches
of Turkish government officials (foreign officials have no free-speech rights
in Germany, their speeches happen entirely at the pleasure of the German
government), and regular Nazi name-calling of German politicians.

The Netherlands however have elections this week where a far-right populist
could get many votes, so the current ruling party there (VVD) wants to
position itself strongly against Erdoğan's aggressive antics in order to
retain conservative voters. This is understandable, but of course it has the
disadvantage that it plays right into Erdoğan's strategy.

~~~
mkaziz
Of all the governments in the world today, I am most impressed by Merkel's
Germany. She has remarkable ability to stand strong in the face of criticism
and do what's right without bowing to populism.

~~~
netsharc
There's a great profile that shows she's a sleuth politican, despite
appearances of being a "Let's wait and see" sort of person.
[http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/31/angela-merkel-has-a-
play...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/31/angela-merkel-has-a-playbook-for-
bullies-like-trump/)

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psion_
Every now and then I end up helping someone I know out with their twitter
strategy or something on their PC. The number of full access 3rd party
integrations people willingly sign up to and the number of browser plugins
people happily add always shocks me.

Part of the problem is that getting your account hacked is such a widespread
problem that people just accept it and there isn't much incentive for
developers to invest heavily in preventing poor user decisions that exacerbate
the situation.

Ideally developers of services like Twitter - and all those random SaaS apps
you pipeline important business information to - should invest in:

* Better language about granting access rights up front. Chrome is always impressing me with their approach to language on HTTPS warning dialogs etc. Anyone allowing API access should spend lots of time crafting how they explain their token system to users.

* Requiring manual re-confirmation of access rights for integrations after a certain period of no use.

* Detecting unusual access patterns for integrations - usually this integration posts once per day per account, now it's posting continually.

Hopefully there are machine learning startup teams working on this. I'm sure
at least some companies would care enough to send a log of 3rd party
integration interactions to a machine learning startup and receive alerts of
anonymous behaviour back.

(Yes, I know the irony of suggesting the answer to excessive 3rd party
integration is a startup that provides anomaly detection as a service - but I
doubt most small services offering integrations would be able to engineer a
strong system like this...)

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camus2
Is Twitter Counter related to Twitter? if not, how come they are authorized to
use the word Twitter in their product name?

~~~
askmike
Not related, but they have licensed the name (also have been around for very
long).

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arianvanp
Yes lets hijack AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL to prove our point that We are not the
facsists but the Dutch are... that will totally work...

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ojilles
Sesame Street, too, just to clinch the deal.

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philfrasty
So they basically had already access to all those accounts for presumably a
long time (months?) just to make that one coordinated post today?

Kinda scary...the amount of effort put in to make this possible as well as the
intended (unknown? NL?) goal from the attackers POV.

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nirav72
Who ever that was, just handed Geet Wilder's the election. Well played.

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cr1895
>Who ever that was, just handed Geet Wilder's the election. Well played

I'm not sure you understand the mechanics of the election in the NL. The
parties campain for seats in the Tweede Kamer, and no party will win a clear
majority of seats. Therefore a coalition government will have to be formed
among the leading parties. The other leading parties have refused to work with
Wilders due to his anti-Muslim statements, and recent polls have shown fewer
expected seats for the PVV. In no way has the election been handed to PVV.

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magickbirdy
...or maybe someone is trying to defame Erdogan by associating Erdogan with
Nazi?

~~~
Xylakant
Not taking any stance on the matter of who's the hacker and what are their
intentions, but Erdogan has compared the German and Dutch administration Nazi
multiple times by now in public speeches, so the tweets content are pretty
much his stance boiled down to 140 chars.

