Even if this *is *all a scam, politicians are learning what kind of bullshit they can’t get away with. Do you think any future presidential candidates are ever going to try to hide their tax returns again? Not going to happen. Maybe it’ll prevent some more unsavory future candidates from running, and I think that’s a good thing. I also secretly love this subversive hacker shit, it’s like crack to me. I hate interpersonal drama, but political drama in an election year caused by electronic shenaniganery? Bring it AWN.
Remember that Romney did release 2 years of his taxes, and the preparer listed on the bottom of page 2 of the 2011 1040 is clearly listed as PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP, so the fact that Romney is a client of theirs is public knowledge.
From there, it’s not really that much of a stretch to assume that he’s been a client for a while, and if the files were in fact pulled from a network share as the original ransom letter hints, then the physical location where the breach happened isn’t relevant.
Actually, I think that is behind this thing. To drive up Bitcoin exchange rate. Here is a chart for the last year: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg360ztgMzm1g10zm2g25zv
There are a select few who hold large quantities of bitcoins and a stunt like this could cause them to double in value. If nothing else, it will drive up interest and reporting on them and that will attract more people and that will drive up the exchange rate.
Well, if it was an H1-B contractor, they could be back in their home country already. Also, it isn’t hard to social engineer your way into spaces, so they could be referring to some poor employee that they piggy-backed through a door on. If that was the case, the employee probably doesn’t even know that they were the ones that let them in.
You would have to provide ID to setup an eBay account and it is against their TOS to sell illegal products, so eBay would shut them down pretty quick.
They need to start intrade trading on this event: “Will the perpetrator(s) be identified before Sep 28 2012?”
I see it differently. More likely, this is precedent, and we won’t see candidates’ tax returns again if Romney wins.
We’re constantly redefining what’s acceptable from a candidate.
The word ‘hack’ is shifting. It may eventually mean a trick, especially using something in a way that it wasn’t designed to be used, that solves a problem. Right now, the phrase ‘life hack’ is used for that meaning, but I could see the life part dropping off.
Because they are a financial services firm, they HAVE to work with Secret Service ANY time that there is a suspicion that their systems have been compromised. So this isn’t a “Romney” specific thing, this is a basic response to the claim of unauthorized access.
From the article quote:
Translation – our audit data sucks, so you can’t prove they stole any data.
If they prepared his 2011 taxes, they also could have needed copies of his prior returns in order do his taxes. That would explain the two different formats.
If they were in fact pulled from a network share then this thing is real.
If they weren’t then how did the parties involved know that they were accessible from that particular office? Presumably they are, otherwise PWC and the Secret Service would know this is a scam.
I suppose the whole thing could be a lucky guess but I notice that no one is questioning the details about how they got into the office, so the perpetrators seem to have some knowledge of the layout of the building.
If I were planning a hoax like this I’d avoid details that could potentially be proven wrong. I’d simply claim to have hacked into their computers remotely, or that I had broken into a PWC office without saying which one, in what part of the country, or how I did it.
There’s a lot of detail in the story that no one so far is denying.
Or, for that matter, they could contain viruses or Trojan horses, so the people who sent them would then have access to major news media or even Secret Service computers.
That could easily be a motive, but I’m pretty sure the Secret Service is very careful about such things. They probably have computers that are just for that purpose and have no network connections and can easily be reformatted if necessary.
Didn’t hacking as a philosophical position originate from social engineering and brute force, rather than sophisticated coding?
That’s actually the original usage. The idea of hacking as malicious gaining of access wasn’t a primary usage until the popular press got a hold of it.
The source of the identifying phrases has been… identified:
However, all these considerations did not deter me from the path of duty; the moment I understood the will of my Heavenly Father, I felt a determination to go at all hazards, believing that he would support me by his almighty power, and endow me with every qualification that I needed; and although my family was dear to me, and I should have to leave them almost destitute, I felt that the cause of truth, the Gospel of Christ, outweighed every other consideration.
– the journals of Heber C. Kimball, who led the first overseas Mormon mission in 1837
The Heavenly Father thing was kind of a giveaway that it was from some Mormon text.
I propse that the SDMB take up a collection to make an alternative bid.
I suggest we offer them tree-fiddy to mow Unca Cecil’s lawn.
But I was running the hoax scenario. If the files are forgeries, they never set foot at PWC.
SteveNC: Forensic accounting involves internal consistency checks. There might even be publicly available claims that could be verified or at least ones that will play on Fox News. The bar at that network is pretty low after all. There are also some less well known tricks which I’m uncomfortable discussing here, though I learned of them from a general publication on the internet. Nothing is 100% of course: I’m just thinking that forging the figures on a tax return with only hazy knowledge of the target would be challenging. What are the odds that the perps are CPAs with multiple years of experience handling hedge fund accounts? I wouldn’t say zero, but I was sketching a scenario with components that were most probable individually.
Because hacking, in the hacker subculture, doesn’t necessarily involve computers. To quote the Jargon File
Mind you, without knowing the details it’s hard to tell if this really meets the criteria of creative or ingenuity, but from a certain point of view, it could be considered a hack.
Ok, here’s part of the ransom note courtesy of the Examiner: PWC Office @ 830 Crescent Centre Drive, Suite 260, Franklin, TN 37067
Telephone: [1] (615) 503-2860
Romney's 1040 tax returns were taken from the PWC office 8/25/2012 by gaining access to the third floor via a gentleman working on the 3rd floor of the building. Once on the 3rd floor, the team moved down the stairs to the 2nd floor and setup shop in an empty office room. During the night, suite 260 was entered, and all available 1040 tax forms for Romney were copied.
A package was sent to the PWC on suite 260 with a flash drive containing a copy of the 1040 files, plus copies were sent to the Democratic office in the county and copies were sent to the GOP office in the county at the beginning of the week also containing flash drives with copies of Romney's tax returns before 2010. A scanned signature image for Mitt Romney from the 1040 forms were scanned and included with the packages, taken from earlier 1040 tax forms gathered and stored on the flash drives.
The group will release all available files to the public on the 28 of September, 2012
Ok, it’s probably not the Yes-men, as the initial thumb drives didn’t go to the media. Which is disappointing, really. I guess we can rule out Joey Scaggs as well. The English is a little odd, a little broken, but it doesn’t sound foreign to me either. I’d be surprised if this emanated from Nigeria. Check out the [1] in front of the area code though - that international dialing code indicates either a non-US citizen or a red herring.
I’m wondering whether the layout described fits with the PWC floorplan.
Well, hell. Ninja’d by **Finagle **hours ago because I didn’t read the whole thread. At least I linked to the original Jargon File site!
This doesn’t fit the Yes-men style.
I’m guessing there are at lease a couple real Secret Service investigators working on this. I don’t think Yes-men have ever tied up law enforcement beyond a simple trespass complaint by a cranky victim organization.
This is also a directly inflicted black-eye on PWC’s failed security. Yes-men would get PWC to punch themselves in the eye in a way that PWC would have no one to blame but themselves.
This is closer to Anonymous’ style, except that they’ve never demanded funds that I know of. It could be a wikileaks supporter gone rogue? Or a holder of bitcoins looking to cash out? Or the Romney camp gone insanely desperate to turn the tax debate into Romney’s favor?
The only thing I rule out is anyone associated to Obama. If that were the case, the flash drives would have been un-encrypted and delivered to about 100 news papers and bloggers free of charge.