Congressman Weiner's inappropriate tweet

[A'isha]

This blogger has apparently found a way for someone to get a picture posted to a yfrog account not belonging to them, without knowing the password. He also says it automatically generates a twitter message containing a link to said yfrog picture, without the accountholder actually sending a tweet.

No "hacking" involved...apparently all it takes is knowledge of the email address associated with the yfrog account.

 

[A Laughing Baby]

It's unlikely that it was altered, but the resolution didn't match Weiner's Blackberry camera, and there's some other odd things in there that I can't remember.

 

[Aoidoi]

Picking her out for flirting, yes, picking her out and randomly sending a cock shot with no prior interaction, not so much.

As the picture was shown on last night's Daily Show without blurring, I have to question the description. Bulge shot, maybe. Certainly not the sort of thing a politician should be sending out, but it didn't seem nearly as explicit to me as everyone seems to be making it out to be.

In the past 2 weeks I have had 2 friends get their Facebook hacked somehow to post items to their walls. I assume if they had Twitter integrated it would also have been sent that way. While I don't know how either was hacked, given Facebook's numerous public security screwups I don't know that the hackers necessarily had to have their passwords. I seem to recall a session hijacking exploit covered recently that would have allowed it, and I've had games where I set it so that they couldn't post to my wall do so anyway, so that's at least 2 avenues where such a thing could have occurred without a hacker having the password.

 

[Unabogie]

This blogger has apparently found a way for someone to get a picture posted to a yfrog account not belonging to them, without knowing the password. He also says it automatically generates a twitter message containing a link to said yfrog picture, without the accountholder actually sending a tweet.

No "hacking" involved...apparently all it takes is knowledge of the email address associated with the yfrog account.

Wow. Anyone have time to try this at home? How about one of the people here who have been claiming this is proof of Weiner's bad actions take the time to open a dev account on Twitter and YFrog with a temp email address. We run the steps from this link and see if it:

1. Posts the picture.
2. Posts that picture on the twitter feed.

If both of these are easily accomplished, does that constitute reasonable doubt, considering the source of the chargers?

Anyone game?

 

[Unabogie]

As the picture was shown on last night's Daily Show without blurring, I have to question the description. Bulge shot, maybe. Certainly not the sort of thing a politician should be sending out, but it didn't seem nearly as explicit to me as everyone seems to be making it out to be.

In the past 2 weeks I have had 2 friends get their Facebook hacked somehow to post items to their walls. I assume if they had Twitter integrated it would also have been sent that way. While I don't know how either was hacked, given Facebook's numerous public security screwups I don't know that the hackers necessarily had to have their passwords. I seem to recall a session hijacking exploit covered recently that would have allowed it, and I've had games where I set it so that they couldn't post to my wall do so anyway, so that's at least 2 avenues where such a thing could have occurred without a hacker having the password.

The Facebook hack works by using Facebook connect and "scraping" the resulting auth token. Basically, when you go to a site that's has a Facebook widget in it, you are returned a token that represents a session. It looks like ".ad3545adfsfadsf98608990". So they scrape the results of that looking for that string, then use that to ping Facebook's Graph API. This appears to be a different kind of security hole where it's more a matter of YFrog and Twitter failing to display the source of the content they pass through.

 

[Newtons Bit]

This blogger has apparently found a way for someone to get a picture posted to a yfrog account not belonging to them, without knowing the password. He also says it automatically generates a twitter message containing a link to said yfrog picture, without the accountholder actually sending a tweet.

No "hacking" involved...apparently all it takes is knowledge of the email address associated with the yfrog account.

The blogger says that an image uploaded by someone else doesn't have a URL under it. But then the link to the "proof" contains the URL under it and the name of the person who uploaded it. The photo on the Rep.'s page doesn't have that.

I'd say this latest bit of "debunking" is still far short of the mark.

 

[Unabogie]

The blogger says that an image uploaded by someone else doesn't have a URL under it. But then the link to the "proof" contains the URL under it and the name of the person who uploaded it. The photo on the Rep.'s page doesn't have that.

I'd say this latest bit of "debunking" is still far short of the mark.

Care to take up my challenge? Shouldn't take more than 30 minutes.

 

[Newtons Bit]

Care to take up my challenge? Shouldn't take more than 30 minutes.

Sure, PM with my info sent.

 

[Unabogie]

Sure, PM with my info sent.

Replied.

 

[Ziggurat]

It makes me think she's telling the truth and that Weiner didn't send the shot.

She never claimed that he didn't send the picture. Which makes sense, because she's in no position to determine who sent it. I don't know why you keep trying to advance that particular fiction.

 

[Aoidoi]

The Facebook hack works by using Facebook connect and "scraping" the resulting auth token. Basically, when you go to a site that's has a Facebook widget in it, you are returned a token that represents a session. It looks like ".ad3545adfsfadsf98608990". So they scrape the results of that looking for that string, then use that to ping Facebook's Graph API. This appears to be a different kind of security hole where it's more a matter of YFrog and Twitter failing to display the source of the content they pass through.

Yeah, I know nothing of YFrog and only a little of Twitter, just wanted to point out that this sort of thing happens to non-politicians all the time. With services that are specifically designed to be "social" there's a lot of ways for unfortunate things to end up shared accidentally or maliciously.

I'm actually a bit surprised this sort of thing hasn't happened more often to public figures. The only incidents that are leaping to mind are people messing with Zuckerberg's FB stuff, and that's sort of a unique case. Certainly seems like an easy avenue for dirty tricks, though diminishing returns would quickly set in.

 

[A'isha]

The blogger says that an image uploaded by someone else doesn't have a URL under it. But then the link to the "proof" contains the URL under it and the name of the person who uploaded it. The photo on the Rep.'s page doesn't have that.

I'd say this latest bit of "debunking" is still far short of the mark.

I clicked on the yfrog image, and the URL didn't appear for me. However, I have NoScript on my Firefox. I allowed scripts to run on that page, and the URL then appeared.

So, while the "no URL" isn't the smoking gun showing that any given yfrog pic was uploaded this way, it's trivially easy to make the page display without that URL, just like it would had this method not been used (and just like it appears in the Representative's image).

In fact, the lack of any URL at all on the screenshot of the Representative's yfrog image is interesting, since in the screenshot of the image that the blogger uploaded himself, a URL does appear. The only difference seems to be that just the URL appears when you upload it yourself, while the URL plus the name of the uploader appear when using the email method.

 

[leftysergeant]

If both of these are easily accomplished, does that constitute reasonable doubt, considering the source of the chargers?

Were I sitting on a jury, there is no way I could accept any of the "evidence" against Weiner.

It is, however, totally consistant with slime boy Breitbart's MO.

 

[TraneWreck]

She never claimed that he didn't send the picture. Which makes sense, because she's in no position to determine who sent it. I don't know why you keep trying to advance that particular fiction.

The argument is that Weiner was carrying on some kind of flirtatious or more serious affair with this woman, she denies it.

It is one thing to send inappropriate pictures to a person you have a prior relationship with. If the flirting escalated or they were having a physical affair, it's reckless behavior, but it's not completely insane.

Taking a picture of your junk and mailing it to a random twitter follower with whom you've never so much as exchanged a smiley-face emoticon is literally insane.

Surely you can see the difference between those two actions. The woman's statements make the first situation seem very unlikely, and the second is just absurd. Weiner just thought, "here, let me take this picture of my boner with a camera that isn't mine (or that I've never used before), then I'll send that picture from my twitter account to a random woman that I've never talked to before."

I don't know what stretches credulity more, buying into that explanation of events or believing anything produced by Breitbart. Either way you're buying into some seriously stupid **** that wouldn't mean much even if it were true.

 

[Ziggurat]

The argument is that Weiner was carrying on some kind of flirtatious or more serious affair with this woman

Whose argument? That was certainly never something I suggested. In fact, I can't recall anyone in this thread suggesting that. So... strawman.

 

[HoshizoraZankou]

(all emphasis mine)

She never claimed that he didn't send the picture. Which makes sense, because she's in no position to determine who sent it. I don't know why you keep trying to advance that particular fiction.

From the lady in question:

The account that these tweets were sent from was familiar to me; this person had harassed me many times after the Congressman followed me on Twitter a month or so ago. Since I had dealt with this person and his cohorts before I assumed that the tweet and the picture were their latest attempts at defaming the Congressman and harassing his supporters.

Care to try that again?

 

[leftysergeant]

Whose argument? That was certainly never something I suggested. In fact, I can't recall anyone in this thread suggesting that. So... strawman.

So you are saying that Weiner just got the crazy idea of sending some random female follower a lewd picture, right in the aftermmath of a congress critter's screwing up his own career doing the same thing and handing a slam-dunk Republicon seat to the Democrats.



Very rational way of thinking.

 

[Brainster]

This blogger has apparently found a way for someone to get a picture posted to a yfrog account not belonging to them, without knowing the password. He also says it automatically generates a twitter message containing a link to said yfrog picture, without the accountholder actually sending a tweet.

No "hacking" involved...apparently all it takes is knowledge of the email address associated with the yfrog account.

If that was the case Weiner would have simply stated "That was not a picture taken by or of me." Instead he's stonewalling.

 

[Newtons Bit]

Surely you can see the difference between those two actions. The woman's statements make the first situation seem very unlikely, and the second is just absurd. Weiner just thought, "here, let me take this picture of my boner with a camera that isn't mine (or that I've never used before), then I'll send that picture from my twitter account to a random woman that I've never talked to before."

Well, the Rep. is saying that he doesn't know if the picture is actually of him or not. Which is... well... odd.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, sitting down for a set of television interviews Wednesday to answer questions about a lewd photo sent from his Twitter account to a college student, flatly denied sending the image. But he could not say "with certitude" whether the photo, which depicted a man's bulging underwear, was in fact an image of him.

"You know, I can't say with certitude. My system was hacked. Pictures can be manipulated. Pictures can be dropped in and inserted," Weiner said

 

[Ziggurat]

Care to try that again?

That's a statement about what she assumed to be the case at an early stage of this whole mess. It is not a statement about what she believes now, let alone what she ever actually knew. Again, she's not in any better position than the rest of us to know who sent the tweets, so her opinion on the issue is of no significance here.