How Naoki Hiroshima lost his $50,000 twitter handle

[Gumby]

Originally Posted by AzNightmare

So is there an @A @B @C, etc.?
I don't use Twitter. So confused why is this @N so special?
Posted via RS Mobile

Remember back in the ICQ days, people would brag about having 6 digit ICQ numbers?

Same deal.

[AzNightmare]

Oh I see.

Well in that case... I'll sell my StarCraft BroodWar (West Sever) account.
It has a ; in it...
You can't use those characters in usernames any more.

[bakasam]

There was a similar case from a few months back. Guy got his phone/computer and all wiped lol

How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

[meme405]

This is no different from all those sheiks and stuff in abu dhabi and dubai buying single digit license plates for millions of dollars.

Its rare. there is only 26 single letter twitter handles...

EDIT: Many domain name for internet sites are stupid expensive as well. Because the chances of someone entering them accidental or stumbling upon them and getting hits is really high.

[Vale46Rossi]

Account has been restored!

In January, Naoki Hiroshima lost his Twitter handle, @N, to the hands of a hacker who used social engineering and extortion to wrest the username from Hiroshima's hands. But today Twitter restored it to him after more than a month of the username being suspended.

After @N was stolen, Hiroshima wrote a post explaining how the theft happened. Ars published the story (which originally appeared on Medium), as well as an account of a man whose more valuable @jb handle was almost hijacked using the same methods.

In Hiroshima's case, a hacker was able to obtain some credit card information from his PayPal account and used that to reset the login credentials on his GoDaddy account. Then, the thief modified several details pertaining to Hiroshima's domain so that he was unable to access his own site's information. When the thief couldn't reset the password for @N, he turned to extortion, contacting Hiroshima and demanding he reset the password to his Twitter account or suffer the destruction of his website's domains.

Hiroshima eventually turned @N over to the attacker and notified Twitter, but Twitter said it was “investigating” and did not return the handle to Hiroshima right away. The @N account was made private and was later shut down, but access was not restored to Hiroshima until today.

”Order has been restored,” Hiroshima tweeted from @N on Tuesday afternoon. Ars contacted Twitter for comment, but a spokesperson said the company doesn't talk about private accounts for privacy and security reasons.

For a deeper dive into the security lapses that allowed this attack to happen, check out Ars' analysis article here.

Sauce: Twitter restores $50,000 @N username to its owner | Ars Technica

[SkinnyPupp]

If I were him I would sell that shit right away for $50K

[GLOW]

more interested as to paypal's comments regarding divulging personal info. they probably don't give a fuck though

[RRxtar]

the thing that concerns me is people reading this and saying "i bet i can do that too" and trying it as well.


inb4 skinnypupp's username gets hacked.

[AzNightmare]

Originally Posted by RRxtar

the thing that concerns me is people reading this and saying "i bet i can do that too" and trying it as well.


inb4 skinnypupp's username gets hacked.

inb4 no one finds skinnypupp's username worth 50k...