Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/31/a-17-year-old-was-arrested-for.html
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His name is Zero Cool
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This kid is going places! Probably prison first, but not for long. And then onto Big Tech to legally (if not unethically) make vast sums of money. Modern day Abagnale.
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Well, that explains things. It was a pretty unimaginative scam that seemed structured the way it was in part because the scammer didn’t have any resources to spend to make it far more profitable.
To jail, yeah. To have a profitable career in tech, probably not. What’s been revealed about the “hack” is that it wouldn’t have taken much to do it because the primary cause was embarrassingly bad security practices by Twitter. It was really just a matter of time before someone did it. This kid could have just stumbled on the information via luck more than anything, without any real technical expertise at all.
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Title need to be edited to “Florida boy was arrested…”
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I feel like this could may have helped us dodge a huge bullet by making Twitter clean that up. Imagine if the day before the election, all those accounts dropped fake conspiracy theories about Biden. There will probably still be a huge, overwhelming October surprise or 3…
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As I’ve said before of Twitter:
There’s no greater concentration of hapless developers and feckless managers in one place in the industry (including the video games segment, to put it in perspective)
Add Twitter’s infosec team – defeated by a 17-year-old “mastermind” – to the “hapless” category.
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Someone is about to get beat with a wooden spoon or sandal when they get home… 
“You told me you were doing your homework!!”
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They’re gonna lock the kid up and throw away the key, so we’ll all be safe. Meanwhile, Twitter and its lame-ass security? Poor Twitter. Aw poor poor Twitter. Their reputation has been tarnished and blemished by evil hackorz! Its not fair /s
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Came here for Hackers reference, leaving satisfied
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Word on the street is don trump is going to announce charges against Biden/Obama and other “deep state” operatives stemming from the Durham investigation.
Uh huh.
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“The Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office is prosecuting REDACTED because Florida law allows minors to be charged as adults in financial fraud cases such as this when appropriate.”
America. Where we only treat kids as adults when they fuck up.
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Seriously. This kid couldn’t legally buy a beer or a pack of smokes. Now he’s off to a prison where he’ll be fucked with for years at which point he’ll probably be suffering from PTSD for the rest of his life. He’s probably not even going to get to go to juvie.
Yeah, he fucked up. So did Twitter. If I was caught for half of the stunts I pulled off when I was 17, I’m sure my life would have ended up differently. To quote one of his more prominent victims “there but for the grace of god go I”. I really hope Biden commutes his sentence.
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This. As someone who has spent my life working for tech companies, much of that time in security, I can say with some authority that this twerp is a script kiddie, and we don’t hire script kiddies.
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Florida man: “Twitter are libtard snowflakes who try censoring OUR PRESIDENT!”
Florida kid: “Hold my… Errrr… Hold this beer.”
ETA, TIL: Florida man could be on a moderate this content list?
Or just because the post was was shorter?
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It’s not clear to me that he’s even a script kiddie, given that they arrested others as well - someone may have just handed him the login info.
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I’ve found that certain words might trigger a “post needs approval” thing, well at least i know for certain the word “trοll” has done it for me a few times in the past.
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I’m surprised his name and mugshot are out there at all, what with him being a minor.
Oh wait, I’m not at all surprised.
Yeah, I was just surprised “Florida man” would be one of these.
It’s nearly the same as “troll”, but only from a slightly odd angle and at a specific light, or time of the day.
Anyway, even as a European, I feel like the sunshine state needs to do something about its image.
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