Amazon Security Staff Reported Its Own Hostile Tweets as 'Suspicious,' Fearing They'd Been Hacked (theintercept.com) 46
After Amazon's public relations account sent a number of tweets taunting public officials, staffers were so concerned about the "unnecessarily antagonistic" tone that a security engineer filed a suspicious activity report, believing that the company's social media account had been hacked, according to internal company documents obtained by The Intercept. From a report: One tweet, responding to Rep. Mark Pocan's criticism of Amazon labor practices, said, "You don't really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you?" "These tweets are unnecessarily antagonistic (risking Amazon's brand), and may be a result of unauthorized access by someone with access to the account's credentials," the report states. "The tweets in question do not match the usual content posted by this account, and doesn't seem to match the quality careful wording, and doesn't report the same source-label (the offending tweets all report 'Twitter Web App' instead of 'Sprinklr')." The report was filed on Friday, according to two Amazon employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional reprisal, but was promptly closed out. An internal Amazon correspondence log provided to The Intercept said the tweets were "not a technical issue": "I got details from [redacted] that this is [an] ongoing PR issue and does not require any technical support. PR leadership are aware of it." "It basically got sent into a black hole," the employee who provided the log said. "Just resolved as no issue."
It was resolved as no issue... (Score:3, Insightful)
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> authorized by the powers that be
I doubt it has any broad approval. More likely a drunken tweet by someone high up the food chain that does stupid things to detriment of the company. We call that pulling a Kathleen Kennedy.
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They're probably going to get their fartbox tongue punched by Bezos in private.
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Whoooosh! That's the point, the tweets were sufficiently outrageous that Amazon's own security people thought it had to be a hack, but it wasn't.
Comment (Score:5, Insightful)
Haha, who am I kidding? I'm sure Amazon will continue to do just fine.
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Re:SJW doing his/her/they bit (Score:4, Funny)
Alex Jones would be seen as a liberal pansy here on Slashdot. And nothing SJW (whatever it's definition) about reporting suspicious tweets coming from the corporate account. "Are you sure we haven't been hacked, tweets read 'yo mama so fat she put gravy in her covfefe'?"
Re:SJW doing his/her/they bit (Score:5, Insightful)
The stereotype of the antisocial, misogynistic computer geek didn't exactly get pulled out of thin air, unfortunately.
Re: SJW doing his/her/they bit (Score:2)
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Could also be due to the amount of SJW nonsense that gets posted here nowadays. This article is a great example; turned out to be a non-issue, yet apparently people still want to be offended by it...thus the article was born.
The moment someone identifies themselves as a member of the "Woke and Miserable" tribe, they should be ignored. Lacking that, they should be told just what kind of miserable cunt they're being.
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The number of people on /. who are willing to just shut down a discussion and cry "SJW" is disturbingly high.
I agree, it's lazy (it's actually a logical fallacy known as Bulverism [wikipedia.org]). However, I believe that both on Slashdot and outside the clamors of SJWism are a drop in the ocean compared to the - equally vocal, usually lacking any base, and much more effective in shutting down discussions - claims by SJWs or SJW sympathizers. Accusations of racism, sexism, of being a member/fan of a certain historical German political party, of being a closet pedophile or a Trump supporter, and so on are much more frequent. Some
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I tend very much to be left of center and progressive (but not Progressive) and I agree 100%. The SJWs wanting to cancel the world in kangaroo court need to go for the good of progress, just like the Q crazies and other Trumpists. They're NOT helping.
I favor social justice and it's worth fighting for. I read SJW as a sarcasm much like you might call an able bodied adult who needs to be rescued in a kiddie pool "Aquaman".
The term does get mis-applied sometimes, but in other cases it's dead-on.
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Re:SJW doing his/her/they bit (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a security professional. I'm pretty far from being a SJW; in fact I think they are counter-productive to the cause the claim. You don't get past racial tension by playing the race card every damn day, by blaming absolutely everything on racism. Nor by constantly talking about nothing other than race and gender 24/7.
In my job as a security professional, I will absolutely question any and all communications that claim to be from top management if I have any reason to suspect they are potentially suspicious, such if they are out of character.
Scammers try to impersonate the CEO every week. Actually I treat as potentially suspicious any communication claiming to be from the CEO unless I can verify it via technical means. One of the more extreme examples was notifications from LinkedIn saying "John Bigboss has invited you to their network" or whatever the notifications say. On the first few I confirmed with the CEO that it was indeed his legitimate LinkedIn account, not a bad guy posing as him in order to later send them a scam message via LinkedIn. Once he confirmed the first two or three, I knew it's his normal habit to add people on LinkedIn so I quit asking.
Treating odd communications as potentially suspicious isn't SJW for a security professional; it's our job.
* Autocorrect tried to make me say the play race CARS all the time. :)
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They don't (Score:2)
Abortion, gun rights, skin color and now culture war. All are focus group teste
Yeah, well, Warren's response is worse... (Score:5, Insightful)
And fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets [twitter.com].
. Goes with the job, babe. We have to remind them they are public servants, can't let them go around smashing companies, or anybody else, because of what they say
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It's Amazon's job to go around smashing companies.
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We have to remind them they are public servants,
What legislation put forth by either heckled senator makes you think they have forgotten that fact?
can't let them go around smashing companies, or anybody else, because of what they say
Nobody has suggested breakup up companies because of what they say but rather because of how they act. There are too many companies that have simply become so large that it enables them to easily use anti-competitive and monopolistic tactics that hurt both employees and customers.
What was being discussed was the fact that employees aren't even being given time to use a toilet. If that's not dystopian then no
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You did read the bit I quoted from the senator herself? She wants to break them up so they can't "heckle" her anymore. She is plain old partisan, not really against predatory capitalism.
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She wants to break them up so they can't "heckle" her anymore.
Really? So that's why she was talking about breaking up giant companies before this happened? Really? How dense are you?
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Theater... Lots of chatter to win reelection
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Right because everything in her past says, "I'm friendly with corporate giants."
Your argument is either disingenuous or you are so dense that you are on the verge of becoming a singularity.
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No. She has wanted to break them up because businesses that are too big to fail end up holding We the People hostage to their bottom line. She was pointing out that one sign of a company that has become too big to fail is that they no longer feel the need to be civil in their communication, even with people who shape the laws they operate under.
For example, there are three types of people who would go into court and address the judge as "fuckface". The mentally ill, burned out druggies, and people who belie
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While valid points, I would counterpoint that people don't make decisions in an emotional vacuum, and when you make the person who's going to decide angry with you, they are more likely to decide something that will hurt you.
Consider "We're AT&T. We don't have to care." https://mapio.net/pic/p-380481... [mapio.net]
I doubt that was really AT&T corporate policy, but a lot of people certainly felt it was. So AT&T was broken up...and that was a big part of the reason. (Was it an improvement? Well, I miss B
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Or the classic [vimeo.com].
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Or she was pointing out that Amazon is being totally unprofessional about the process by pretending to be just a random twitter user. If that PR angle goes wrong, they'll just scapegoat some PR person and try another.
The snotty tweet in question is actually an inflammatory rhetorical trick. It tries to blame the senator for writing loopholes into the law when everyone with a clue knows that this particular senator is all about building legislative support to remove those loopholes, many of which are not
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Fell for what? She took the "insult" personally. That's her fault.
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And furthermore, she should be hammering on her own colleagues to end the filibuster and get some work done, not yelling on Twitter. There's plenty to do before the next election
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It tries to blame the senator for writing loopholes into the law when everyone with a clue knows that this particular senator is all about building legislative support to remove those loopholes, many of which are not in the law itself but in the rules written to implement it
If one of the few people in the country actually capable of changing the law gets pissed off that you're obeying the law then it is exceedingly reasonable to suggest that their lawmaking body changes the laws that they themselves passed into legislation.
That Warren doesn't think she's individually responsible merely shows her ignorance. She's had 8 years to fix the tax system, so it absolutely is on her.
As for heckling, it's called feedback. She should welcome and cherish it, not throw a tantrum like a smal
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OTOH, you also shouldn't be snotty to your waiter.
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A waiter actually serves, doesn't sit back and collect interest, they have to work every day to have breakfast. And they don't get snotty with the customer.
Genius! (Score:1)
I have to remember this for the next Christmas party at my company!
Security engineer: boss, I have found a very strange tweet from mr. Zap25. I think his account has been hacked because he never uses those words in any of his other tweets.
Me: no sir, I did indeed not send a Tweet to your wife telling her she can take her bloody christmas-bonus and shove it where only her mistress dare go. I would never use such words, besides I have no knowledge of your wife's sexual preferences and/or partners nor do I eve
Do't suck up to politicians in the USA (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no actual reason to be nice to politicians in the US, because they're going to do what they do no matter what. What they care about is contributions and press coverage.
Just look at Schumer. He's a total schmuck, but he's willing to stick his schlong into anything that gets him press coverage. Nobody remembers anything anyway, except their name. "Oh yeah, that Schumer guy."
Go ahead and make them feel bad. They don't experience a lot of consequences, so give them a couple.
In other countries politicians have actual power. In those countries you should avoid antagonizing them unless you want to get re-educated (looking at you China) or killed (Latin America, the Arab Middle East, and large parts of Africa).
Re:Do't suck up to politicians in the USA (Score:5, Funny)
I always hope some of these people will stand up to them too. They can't do shit if you're that rich. What are they going to do, pass policies bad for your company? Oh noes, then what will I do while I still have my billions, poor me I'm so scared!
Just once I want to see someone pull a "Respectfully, Senator, please gargle with my balls then go fuck yourself" while being forced to testify in Congress.
Senators are generally fairly powerful (Score:3)
Seriously, I get that she's a shrill women and nerds really, really hate that, but go read some of her stuff so you aren't put off by her delivery.
Imagine a world where the economy doesn't collapse every 10 years like clockwork. Where your hard work and gains ar
In the US, power is always checked (Score:3)
A Senator is powerful, but not in the way you think.
Individually they can be a pain in your ass, but they don't really have any authority. They have influence, which is a completely different beast.
If you piss off enough Senators, or a Senator you've pissed of has an opportunity, they may do something that you don't like. However, those opportunities don't happen often and most companies can't really be targeted that effectively at the Federal level.
That said, there's no point in being polite to a Senator w
China again (Score:2)
Dang, those Chinese hackers are good! /s
What is this, 2010? (Score:2, Insightful)
Give me a fucking break. What kind of large corporate entity doesn't have a system of approvals for any official tweets using a corporate accounts? The very idea of such a thing is just retarded. If you're not stupid, you have a system where the tweets go through at least one level of approvals and possibly more depending on the nature of the tweets, and are only published at the end of the approval flow.
Replace all of your IT staff (Score:1)
cover up (Score:2)
I guess that is one way to cover up their own improper tweets
As it's supposed to be but... (Score:2)
So, it seems Amazon have a very robust mechanism of validation and verification. You know that's in the "Good Practice" books, right?
Security see something they're not quite sure of, pass it up the chain to verify it is genuine and then proceed when the answer's known. That's _exactly_ how it's mean to go..
Now, the question is why we're not seeing a report of someone querying whether Warren was hacked. Or aren't there those checks and balances in Government?
Probably an intern (Score:2)
... like Solarwind ;)
15$ Minimum (Score:1)