What up?

November 6, 2009 2:01 PM

The MSNBC Headlines Twitter feed has apparently been hacked.
posted by misha (51 comments total)

flagged for 'it won't be there in 10 minutes'
posted by empath at 2:02 PM on November 6

That's pretty funny.
posted by roll truck roll at 2:04 PM on November 6

Hacked by, apparently, puerile, foul-mouthed cretins. If you have access to this thing, it seems to me that you should expend some energy making the troll a little more subtle.
posted by axiom at 2:04 PM on November 6

Apparently?
posted by box at 2:04 PM on November 6

haha drugs rape socialism lol.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 2:04 PM on November 6

What a colossal missed opportunity to do something clever.
posted by brain_drain at 2:06 PM on November 6 [8 favorites]

Charming.
posted by brundlefly at 2:06 PM on November 6

i raeped glen beck.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:06 PM on November 6

A much less ethical person could have used this to move some serious stock values.
Glad it was just some foul mouthed kid.
posted by bottlebrushtree at 2:06 PM on November 6 [3 favorites]

How can you be sure?
posted by mazola at 2:07 PM on November 6

The password was probably chrismattewsrules
posted by dersins at 2:07 PM on November 6

I am not so sure.
posted by LarryC at 2:07 PM on November 6

Remarkably, still more informative than @foxnews.
posted by naju at 2:08 PM on November 6 [7 favorites]

Hey, these seem to be written by different authors. So there is an exploit out there somewhere that is being used by different people. How do we find it?
posted by LarryC at 2:09 PM on November 6

Pussies: @MADNews101, @ConanVideoBlogs, @AllHuffPost. It's liberals like you that ruin America.

Are you sure it's NOT Fox News?
posted by empath at 2:09 PM on November 6 [2 favorites]

Also, only 2081 followers? Why bother to twitter when you've got a cable channel.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 2:09 PM on November 6

Hey, these seem to be written by different authors. So there is an exploit out there somewhere that is being used by different people. How do we find it?

Someone posted the password on 4chan maybe?
posted by empath at 2:10 PM on November 6

I've always kind of wondered what it is they think has been ruined.
posted by maxwelton at 2:11 PM on November 6

"What up motherfuckers?!?!
24 minutes ago from web"

...hacked how?
posted by Smedleyman at 2:11 PM on November 6

I love the smell of /b/ in the morning.
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 2:11 PM on November 6 [2 favorites]

Don Imus' feed has this startling insight: "WOW. @MSNBCHeadlines has lost their f---ing mind. Has to be hacked."
posted by jbickers at 2:12 PM on November 6

rules 1 and 2 people! come on now...
posted by evilgenius at 2:12 PM on November 6

I don't think its been hacked. I just think an MSNBC Tweeter just read a Teabagger WAKE UP AMERICA sign and then actually waked up.

Because that's how signs work.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:14 PM on November 6 [4 favorites]

Tweets, too.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:15 PM on November 6

Don Imus' feed has this startling insight: "WOW. @MSNBCHeadlines has lost their f---ing mind. Has to be hacked."

Strangely, the exact same comment appears in the Huffington Post and MADNews feeds too.
posted by brain_drain at 2:15 PM on November 6

Was this account ever MSNBC's? The sidebar on their main Twitter account doesn't link to it.
posted by ALongDecember at 2:15 PM on November 6

yeah, it would have been waaay better to keep slipping in a few subtle items. You could have got away with it for months...
posted by GuyZero at 2:15 PM on November 6

Also, this can't be a legit MSNBC feed. They have an established naming convention of msnbc_topic (msnbc_tech, msnbc_tv, etc.), all lower case, always with the underscore.
posted by jbickers at 2:16 PM on November 6

The password was "password".
posted by cazoo at 2:18 PM on November 6

I know it's not actually funny, but I still feel a strange satisfaction knowing that someone important is probably incredibly pissed off about this.
posted by emperor.seamus at 2:18 PM on November 6 [3 favorites]

Suspiciously low follower count and high following count for a major new organisations. So I vote: Sleeper feed, rather than hacked.
posted by WPW at 2:18 PM on November 6 [3 favorites]

Well that's a hell of a thing.
posted by lekvar at 2:21 PM on November 6

The real msnbc_headlines twitter account.

Self-link?
posted by billysumday at 2:22 PM on November 6

"Faked", not "hacked".
posted by Sidhedevil at 2:24 PM on November 6

The Huffington Post feed referenced in the fake MSNBC feed is also fake. The others (Imus, etc.) may be fake as well but I have already wasted enough time thinking about this stupidity.
posted by brain_drain at 2:25 PM on November 6

Actually, that MSNBC_headlines feed isn't linked from MSNBC either. This is confusing.
posted by ALongDecember at 2:25 PM on November 6

The background does not look at all like the background of the other MSNBC feeds, all of which carry a list of feeds that does not include @MSNBCheadlines. @MSNBC_breaking is the actual headline feed. It has 39,000 followers and follows 20 feeds, about the proportions I would expect.
posted by WPW at 2:25 PM on November 6

misha, where did you find this link?
posted by Sys Rq at 2:28 PM on November 6

I call sleeper hoax. Exclamation points in the bio: "News Headlines from MSNBC! Follow @msnbc_breaking for MSNBC Breaking News!"
posted by honest knave at 2:28 PM on November 6

And it's gone.
posted by WPW at 2:28 PM on November 6

Aaaand.... that's all folks.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 2:28 PM on November 6

Got a screen before it was taken down...FWIW
posted by Xoebe at 2:29 PM on November 6

Well, that was anticlimactic.
posted by ixohoxi at 2:30 PM on November 6

The spurious account has been suspended! Juicy details.
posted by localhuman at 2:30 PM on November 6

Oh well. #msnbctwitterfailbutohwaititwasafakesleeperaccount
posted by ALongDecember at 2:31 PM on November 6

It's too bad that 15-year-olds are the only constituency willing to put in the hours and shoulder the risk of brute-forcing passwords with no goal beyond making a statement (obviously lots of people are willing to grind out passwords in hopes of wiring Lenny the Housebound Septuagenarian's money to Eastern Europe). 'Cause the statements 15-year-old kids tend to make are pretty dumb.

A much less ethical person could have used this to move some serious stock values.
Glad Too bad it was just some foul mouthed kid.

FTFY
posted by killdevil at 2:33 PM on November 6

This guy gave up being a fake account after two tweets.
posted by ALongDecember at 2:36 PM on November 6

A much less ethical person could have used this to move some serious stock values.

I don't really think their highfalutin' moral code had much to do with it.
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 2:39 PM on November 6 [1 favorite]

for those who missed it-
posted by localhuman at 2:39 PM on November 6 [1 favorite]

The word "skank" needs to be used more in mainstream news shows.
posted by Burhanistan at 2:39 PM on November 6

He was hiding in a box in the attic the whole time!
posted by mudpuppie at 2:58 PM on November 6 [1 favorite]