Has Metafilter been targeted by China?

February 19, 2013 3:39 PM

Given recent events in the news, how safe is Metafilter from foreign cybersaboteurs?
posted by Renoroc to MetaFilter-Related at 3:39 PM (58 comments total)

中國政府並沒有參與這種非法活動
posted by ageispolis at 3:44 PM on February 19 [14 favorites]

I think the main source of safety is that there isn't anything here they'd want. Hacking us would be a waste of time even if they succeeded.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:46 PM on February 19

Speak for yourself, Chocolate Pickle. MeFi has been a CIA front from day o...

I might have said too much.
posted by Ghidorah at 3:47 PM on February 19

No, to our knowledge, MetaFilter has not been targeted by China. We follow security best practices. Our ISP recently diverted a DDOS attack, so we aren't completely on our own. That said, there's no guarantee. If MetaFilter is interesting to China for some reason we'll do our best to keep things running and as secure as possible.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:47 PM on February 19

Were Chinese saboteurs to hack the site, would there be any chance of any of them standing in as guest moderators? That'd be sweet.
posted by mr. digits at 3:50 PM on February 19

A billion Chinese hackers vs Jessamyn?

She would slay them all with her banjolele!
posted by timsteil at 3:53 PM on February 19 [3 favorites]

有沒有陰謀
posted by ceribus peribus at 4:12 PM on February 19 [1 favorite]

I FOR ONE...
posted by The White Hat at 4:13 PM on February 19 [1 favorite]

a song comes to mind
posted by philip-random at 4:52 PM on February 19

Security though irrelevance?

Be more afraid of some kiddie with a bot network and a childish grudge than an actual nation state.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:53 PM on February 19 [3 favorites]

你所有的基地都属于我们
posted by Hairy Lobster at 5:06 PM on February 19 [4 favorites]

MetaFilter could teach the Chinese a few things about torture. Also, their hackers would be so busy following links that the State Department would be left alone.
posted by Cranberry at 5:10 PM on February 19 [2 favorites]

I heard a rumor that they successfully hacked in, but then found one of our threads about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and went completely off-mission by getting into a violent argument about the topic.
posted by wolfdreams01 at 5:30 PM on February 19 [4 favorites]

They'd probably be distracted by recipes and kittehs.
posted by arcticseal at 5:32 PM on February 19

She would slay them all with her banjolele!

Pew pew! From my sekrit underground bunker also known as the local vocational high school.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:37 PM on February 19 [7 favorites]

They'd probably be distracted by recipes and kittehs.

"Gay men will marry our girlfriends? But we have so much hummus to make!"
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:37 PM on February 19

Pew pew! From my sekrit underground bunker also known as the local vocational high school.

Red Dawn: Vermont
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:38 PM on February 19 [3 favorites]

I would more likely expect MeFi's Twitter account to be hijacked with a message that we had been acquired by Reddit (like the recent Burger King/McDonalds and Jeep/Cadillac hacks). Or maybe the other way around?
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:50 PM on February 19

有沒有陰謀

There is no 陰謀...
posted by TwoWordReview at 5:54 PM on February 19 [2 favorites]

swordfish - i repeat, swordfish
posted by pyramid termite at 6:12 PM on February 19

Isn't this site run on ColdFusion? No one uses that. We're safe. It'd be like hacking a bowling alley.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:15 PM on February 19 [5 favorites]

Renoroc: Given recent events in the news, how safe is Metafilter from foreign cybersaboteurs?

Roughly as safe as other websites.
posted by Brian Puccio at 6:21 PM on February 19

Man oh man do I want to see a heist film where the big centerpiece of the gig is to hack a bowling alley.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:23 PM on February 19 [7 favorites]

Hack the planet platform!
posted by TwoWordReview at 6:25 PM on February 19

Man oh man do I want to see a heist film where the big centerpiece of the gig is to hack a bowling alley.

Now everyone has to bowl with beach balls!

The monitors no longer function, reduced to forlornly blinking the following:

CRASH

AND

BURN

posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:38 PM on February 19 [1 favorite]

Bowling alley, you say?

*clutches Folgers tin*
posted by arcticseal at 6:39 PM on February 19 [1 favorite]

My MeCloud account where I had all my stored posts in FPP Queuer was indeed hacked for its sensitive bits.
posted by Burhanistan at 6:44 PM on February 19

I was thinking more like maybe the bowling pins were like some shady group's hiding-in-plain-sight way of moving drugs or diamonds or whatever and then the hackerly heist squad would find a way to e.g. making the pins all get swapped out and delivered to a staging location—ALL DURING AN INTER-MAFIA BOWLING TOURNAMENT.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:53 PM on February 19 [6 favorites]

Starring Harvey Keitel as The Pinsetter.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:09 PM on February 19

Once TibetFilter is up, the Chinese government will be too busy defending itself from the Dalai lama and an army of ColdFusion powered psionic monks.
posted by benzenedream at 7:24 PM on February 19

Totally safe.

Check your memail inbox for a link to a PDF that describes the valiant security efforts that protect your data.
posted by el io at 7:41 PM on February 19 [2 favorites]

I was thinking more like maybe the bowling pins were like some shady group's hiding-in-plain-sight way of moving drugs or diamonds or whatever and then the hackerly heist squad would find a way to e.g. making the pins all get swapped out and delivered to a staging location—ALL DURING AN INTER-MAFIA BOWLING TOURNAMENT.

Well, yes, OK, that's much, much better. Although I think the pins should be filled with C4, and the hacker heist crew have to the foil the attempted assassination of one of the mob bosses at the tournament, because he's really a deep cover cop, near the end of a years long assignment to TAKE DOWN THE MOB.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:43 PM on February 19

Starring Harvey Keitel as The Pinsetter.

And Vinnie Jones as a hard man with a gold tooth.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:44 PM on February 19

There's a bomb in a special pin, and a key part of the plan involves it being blown up at the right moment to create a distraction, and so they have that pin delivered as pin #1 at just the right time to the lane on which a star mob bowler, Jimmy Three Hundred, is playing, but!

Jimmy's got a new girlfriend, and he's crazy for her, and he lets her bowl a frame at just the wrong time and she gutters twice. OH NO!
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:57 PM on February 19 [1 favorite]

And Jimmy is simultaneously angry at her and so embarrassed about the whole thing that he stomps down the lane and kicks the pin with his shiny custom bowling wingtips and BOOM
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:59 PM on February 19

没有人乱搞与耶稣
posted by deborah at 8:10 PM on February 19

And Jimmy is simultaneously angry at her and so embarrassed about the whole thing that he stomps down the lane and kicks the pin with his shiny custom bowling wingtips and BOOM

JIMMY'S GIRLFRIEND, freshly drenched with JIMMY'S blood, kneels over the remains of his shattered carcass, clutching the shreds of his natty bowling shirt to her chest. She shudders with racking sobs.

From their control room, the hackers watch in horror.

CHRIS 'Sypher' HUDSON: [screaming] WHAT DID YOU DO? WHAT THE FUCK? WE JUST FRAGGED A GUY! GAME OVER, MAN! GAME OVER!.

RIPLEY: You better just start dealing with it, Hudson! LISTEN TO ME! Hudson, just deal with it, because we need you and I'm sick of your bullshit.

NEWT stares at HUDSON, and nods sagely.


Hey, wait a minute....
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 9:18 PM on February 19 [2 favorites]

I know there are indeed Chinese hackers, but the whole OMG hackers from China!!!!1! media frenzy sure is racist.
posted by medusa at 9:49 PM on February 19 [1 favorite]

See? That right there is why we have nothing to fear from Chinese hacker types. They will be reading through all our stuff, munching on hacker treats, and be like: HACKER BOWLING ALLEY MOVIE? FUCK YES!!
posted by empatterson at 2:08 AM on February 20

We develop a game that is irresistibly addictive and also impossible to win.

Their hackers' next appearance will be on the backs of stamps.
posted by Pudhoho at 2:17 AM on February 20

On the bright side, seeing spammers and other problem users being forced to attend struggle sessions and write self-criticisms would be more amusing than just having them get banned.
posted by Infinite Jest at 4:47 AM on February 20

No, we're fine, Mao was one of the original founders of The Cabal.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:39 AM on February 20

No, we're fine, Mao was one of the original founders of The Cabal.

"Mathowie" is an anagram of "Mao weh-ti". You figure it out.
posted by briank at 6:23 AM on February 20

What your buyer's going to be looking for is a broad, complacent user base primed to be blindsided by sudden privacy policy changes or repressive investigations.
posted by flabdablet at 8:39 AM on February 20

I'm liking the bowling alley story, I really am, but it's missing something.

I'm thinking dogs.

Yeah, Bomb-sniffing dogs!

And one of the dogs, see, he used to be Jimmy's partner, back before Jimmy was undercover, when he was a rookie just learning his chops.

And they gave him this dog because it was the worst dog, but Jimmy and the dog showed them all, and they became the best bomb-sniffing dog team on the whole force, and Jimmy got rewarded with a promotion, but the dog stayed on, sniffing for bombs.

So now, fast forward, Jimmy's an undercover detective, and he's been undercover so long those rookie days gone by are like a distant memory, like they never even happened, or happened to someone else, someone not Jimmy Three Hundred, because that's the life he has now, he's living the life of a bowling alley kingpin (heh).

But the dog! The dog never forgot Jimmy.

And Jimmy, he's busted his butt to get the other crime lords to accept him. He's earned his stripes. And he's done it so well that he's almost had his cover blown before, because the dumb plainclothes cops, they aren't all in the know, and Jimmy's really good at what he does. So they keep busting his chops, trying to get something on Jimmy, but he's too slick.

So they send in the dogs.

And there's this wild moment, right, when the dog sees Jimmy and Jimmy sees the dog, and they know each other, man, there's this spark of instant recognition.

And Jimmy knows the dog is going to blow his cover, because that dog loved Jimmy, the Jimmy-that-was, the rookie Jimmy.

So Jimmy's gotta make a tough decision here: the dog or the job?

[commercial break]
posted by misha at 11:25 AM on February 20 [1 favorite]

Pew pew! From my sekrit underground bunker also known as the local vocational high school.

Wasn't there a Fringe episode like this?
posted by maryr at 12:54 PM on February 20

Red Dawn: Vermont

Red Green: Vermont

(for Canadian values of Vermont)
posted by zippy at 8:27 PM on February 20 [1 favorite]

Be more afraid of some kiddie with a bot network and a childish grudge than an actual nation state.

There were one or two times last month I worried I accidentally started an MeFi/Goon war.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 8:50 PM on February 20

Actually, why not hack Metafilter in the same way that the iPhone developer forum was hacked? Use it to deliver the malware payload to the employees of the target companies.

We're already pretty highly ranked for certain search terms thanks to AskMe and I'm sure Fortune 500 employees think about is it safe to eat/DTMFA/bury a body/be my internet doctor as much as everyone else.

Or go a step further and deliberately ask a question that CFOs might search for (how to get better mileage on private jet? FATCA compliance cheat sheet? Off balance sheet tricks?) and use a few other accounts to provide decent answers.

That's what I would do anyhow if I wanted to get creative.
posted by tksh at 9:04 AM on February 21

We can tell if the Chinese hackers have been here if MeFi starts serving 4chan cookies.
posted by salishsea at 2:38 PM on February 22

您为一体，应该欢迎您新的攻击霸主...保龄球馆...嘿。
posted by salishsea at 2:41 PM on February 22 [1 favorite]

💩💩💩💩💩💦💦💦💩👃👽🙊
posted by Burhanistan at 2:45 PM on February 22

Is that a nose or a vanishing penis? Thanks, iOS.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:20 PM on February 22

Its odor is such that it separates the cosmic from the simian in man.
posted by Burhanistan at 4:54 PM on February 22

why would anyone hack this site? it's not exactly important.
posted by krautland at 11:03 PM on February 23

why would anyone hack this site? it's not exactly important.

YOU TAKE THAT BACK.

TAKE IT BACK RIGHT NOW.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:16 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

> why would anyone hack this site? it's not exactly important.

To ban the mods, of course!

Also, to get at the sweet, sweet login information. If usernames/email addresses/passwords could be obtained then hackers could attempt to use those on other sites. Given that the userbase is pretty tiny compared to the bigger networks, it doesn't seem like a determined hacker group would waste time on that.
posted by Burhanistan at 5:27 AM on March 1

Being as how this is Metafilter and has an educated user base, surely none of that sweet, sweet login information would be of any use?

Sigh.
posted by flabdablet at 6:47 PM on March 2