back to article Skype's Twitter account, blog hacked to spread anti-Microsoft messages

Entities claiming to represent the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) have hacked Skype's social media presences and used them to post anti-Microsoft messages. Here's one of the defacements, from Skype's Twitter account. A Skype Tweet composed by a hacker Hi! Microsoft here. Don't use our stuff. Really. Take our word for it. …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I am sure quite a few MS passwords are "Wind0ws" or "3xchange", simple.

    Window cleaners simply do not have the intellect for anything more fancy.

    1. LarsG

      Hack?

      Guys I hate to disappoint you knowing that you put so much effort into this Skype Hack, but you do realise this bit about Microsoft/US spying on you and selling your data is, well, really old news.

      We've known this for years so please, be more original in the future.

    2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Disparaging anyone who uses Windows as lacking intellect is infantile. That said, I've not heard "Window cleaners" in this context before so you get a half point for that actually being somewhat clever.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      > Window cleaners simply do not have the intellect for anything more fancy.

      I used to be jobbing tech-support for a mix of Macs and Windows machines at a design place back in the day. The most common password was 'password'.

      It turns out that utter pants-on-head stupidity is actually platform agnostic.

  2. jake Silver badge

    Am I the only one ...

    ... who finds these childish so-called "hacking" attempts even more daft than the lack of security of the mainstream targets? Honestly, the mind boggles ... One wonders if "big money" internet media investors will ever notice that the current crop of Corporate Brass has absolutely zero clue about reality.

    Until it all comes crashing down, of course. See Enron for a particularly egregious case of "I'm huge on paper ... and the sheeple are clueless! Let's fleece 'em!"

    It'll all end in tears, mark my words ...

  3. bigfoot780

    Two factor authentication

    Surely m$ can enable this for their blog and twitter account.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Ben Tasker

        Re: Two factor authentication

        Whilst that's true, hardly an excuse for not using existing mechanisms is it?

  4. Bob Vistakin
    Mushroom

    2014: Microsofts year of implosion

    And so it begins.

    1. returnmyjedi

      Postponed from 2013. And 2012. And 2011...

    2. RyokuMas
      FAIL

      Re: 2014: Microsofts year of implosion

      God, you're boring. At least Eadon had the chops to get ranty.

    3. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: 2014: Microsofts year of implosion

      Microsoft began imploding some time back. (I.E. when the warring fiefdoms started to generate more chaos through internecine fighting than the executive could generate order.) But it takes a hell of a long time for a company the size of Microsoft to evaporate...and they've a number of business units doing quite well, thanks.

      Also: "Microsofts" should be "Microsoft's". I know that's pedantry, but the inability to grok possessive apostrophes is one of the few grammar mistakes that truly irks me.

  5. Suricou Raven

    Skype for linux?

    Couldn't they draw attention to the linux situation? Skype used to be just as stable and reliable under linux as windows, but since the Microsoft aquisition, just as many predicted, the linux version has turned to crap. It generally works for text, if you don't mind a random freeze from time to time and dropped messages on occasion (which it does warn you of), but try to run audio and you'll be lucky to get five minuts before it crashes. That's if you can get audio at all. I've got Skype on three linux machines running two distros and experience the same problem on them all, and a quick google search tells I am one of many.

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      Re: Skype for linux?

      It is the MS way - buy over a successful multi-platform product, then crapify it by making it only work on Windows, and often then not as good as before. Then profit!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Skype for linux?

      Skype used to be just as stable and reliable under linux as windows, but since the Microsoft aquisition, just as many predicted, the linux version has turned to crap

      That's the way MS works. To me, they're the RyanAir of the software world, given what they did to Visio (and even their own Office product) - it almost seems deliberately malicious towards customers.

      But hey, we switched to OSX where there is such a thing as Omnigraffle. Oh, and for Office? We use LibreOffice as standard. We have one (1) copy of MS Office in the office in case we receive docs from a 3rd party or need to export other than PDF, but otherwise it's all LibreOffice.

      As for Skype, well, it's a mess

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Skype for linux?

        "As for Skype, well, it's a mess"

        Well guess what, you'll find that nearly every on-line provider "reads" the logs and posts. It's how a lot detect spam, if you have an email coming from 10,000 locations, without "reading" the mail, how do you detect those 10,000 mail's are the same.

        And here is some news....MS BOUGHT the product, just as Apple could of done, Google could of done, even you at home could of done if you had the cash. Now this MAY come as a surprise, but if it costs more in time and effort, or doesn't fit in with with how they want the product ultimately to perform, they will dump the platform. It called business. The hallowed Google, blessed be thy name, are guilty of the same practises, as are most other companies.

        Any business that buys a product for a stupid amount of money, then doesn't try to get a return on investment won't be around for long. Like it or not Linux is a VERY small percentage of the desktop / laptop platform (Skype works fine on my Android), so doesn't make much sense, especially when you are aiming to integrate with Office / Lync, which will bring you in a lot of money.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Headmaster

          Re: Skype for linux?

          @Lost All Faith

          The proper sentence construction is "Could have" not "Could of". 3 times in one sentence. Impressive lack of diction there....

          C'mon, this is basic English....I know its Jan 2nd but.......................

          1. Elmer Phud

            Re: Skype for linux?

            "I know its Jan 2nd"

            You're slagging them off for Diction?

            Almost Lol'ed

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Skype for linux?

              "You're slagging them off for Diction?"

              Actually he's slagging them off for grammar.

          2. Timmay

            @ cornz 1

            I applaud you for your pedantic correction of the English language, but over here we don't say Jan 2nd, it's 2nd Jan - smallest unit first, just like dd/mm/yy rather than the backward mm/dd/yy

            I hate that Hollywood film adverts are changing our language - "a Jerry Bruckheimer film, coming October 2nd...", grrrrrrr, noooo, FUCK OFFFFFFF

            1. This post has been deleted by its author

              1. M Gale

                Re: @ cornz 1

                Just like when people ask you what you were doing on 9/11/2001

                I suppose at least when the psychopathic god-botherers blew the fuck out of a few tube trains and a bus in London, they did it on a nicely unambiguous 7/7. How considerate of them.

              2. Florida1920
                Headmaster

                Re: @ cornz 1

                Just like when people ask you what you were doing on 9/11/2001, I can’t remember anything that happened on the 9th of October 13 years ago,

                Uh, don't you mean the 9th of November?

          3. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Skype for linux?

            It's dot, dot, dot, not a whole fecking line of them.

            How hard would it have been to start a sentence with the word "Three" instead of a number?

            Your second and third sentences should be separated with a comma not a full stop, that way they will be grammatically correct and read better to boot!

        2. Chemist

          Re: Skype for linux?

          "then doesn't try to get a return on investment won't be around for long. Like it or not Linux is a VERY small percentage of the desktop / laptop platform (Skype works fine on my Android), so doesn't make much sense, especially when you are aiming to integrate with Office / Lync, which will bring you in a lot of money."

          Main message is not to put your trust/future/business in hock to any one system.

          ( I say this as someone with £6.53 in my Skype account and no other MS dependence )

    3. John P

      Re: Skype for linux?

      We've run Skype on Windows and Linux, and we've found that the connection is quite flaky on the Windows machine (an admittedly ancient laptop) but consistently decent on the small embedded board running Ubuntu.

      It's not stellar on either of them but I suspect this is more down to network configuration/broadband speeds than anything to do with Skype itself.

    4. stratofish

      Re: Skype for linux?

      The only issues I ever have is with PulseAudio config, not Skypes fault at all. Been running it for a couple of years now on OpenSuse for voice and text on pretty much a daily basis. It's almost surprising how stable it is (IMO) given that it was pretty ropey before that. The only issue I can think of is that when someone on Windows calls me sometimes it disconnects after 10 seconds and mine automatically redials them back. That was introduced with an update with the Windows version though I seem to recall. I'm not sure if I've ever seen it crash?

      But... It doesn't let me know about new versions and I don't check very often, so if a new one has come out in the last 6 months or so that shows the behaviour you mention then maybe I should carry on with my version. And if that is the case, I recommend downgrading.

  6. Chris Miller

    How is it known that this hack was the result of weak passwords? It's certainly a plausible explanation, but Is there any evidence that this was actually the case?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      As I know several other people who have had their twitter accounts "hacked" in the past couple of days and they didn't have weak passwords it could well be more than Microsoft being lazy-

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    anti Microsoft message

    Microsoft are doing a pretty good job of sending that all by themselves. The scropgled propaganda bullshit is enough for me to never touch a Microsoft product ever again.

  8. Eradicate all BB entrants

    These accounts will be handled by ...

    ...... the marketing department. Having worked with the residents of these departments most of the time their day job seemed to consist of who could tape their password to the top of their mac in the prettiest manner (I have to admit I was impressed by some of the blu-tac flowers). As these accounts are usually passed around the department as well they usually end up being given the simplest passwords possible.

    I bet if twitter allowed/carried out a login test against all accounts using the twitter account name as password it would get well into double figures.

    1. Vic

      Re: These accounts will be handled by ...

      > As these accounts are usually passed around the department

      I'm currently working with a group that label their machines with a username and password. The user in question is in the sudoers list.

      It's going to be a long, uphill struggle...

      Vic.

  9. David Pollard

    Can this be

    Eadon?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To the "hacking terrorist organisations"

    Hacking skype, sky, the sun etc is the equivalent of armed robbery gang targetting a pensioner or fathers for justice targetting age concern round these parts.

    snowden say's....yes, something we all have known for years and only people who believed silk road was annonymous thought...

    try hacking something worthwhile for your cause like the UN sanctions comittee or NORAD

    Then you may get taken seriously

  11. Jess

    I don't believe they are selling the data to government.

    I seriously doubt they get any more than reasonable expenses, maybe not even that.

    After all they got let off that nasty antitrust case.

  12. Graham Marsden
    Big Brother

    "stop allowing the NSA to access its back end"

    It seems the NSA has access to everyone's back end, so just bend over and brace yourself...

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The final straw!

    I totally believe this is new news and fully justifies instant invasion and democratisation of (insert sovereign state with fair amount of natural resources here).

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Would you like spyware with that?

    Here, have some backdoors, trojans, bots, viruses and other miscellaneous nasties.

    For support, call the NSA.

    1800 SPOOKS R US

  15. dorsetknob

    Skype WTF

    Skype is Totaly shit

    Couple of days ago skype on windows signed me out when i went to sign back in it refused to recognize my ms logon It sugested i reset my password

    now i can log on to hotmail useing same password ect but not SKANK/SKYPE

    Its Fucking crap Bring BACK MESSENGER

    Ps i can use my android phone to log on to skank skype using my hotmail logon and password but windows version refuse's to accept same logon.password

    How fucked up is that

  16. Matheus

    It was not anti-Microsoft propaganda, it was just information for all people.

  17. Chris G

    Skank?

    I have tried to use Skype on my Asus laptop, to date I have tried to install it three times, each time it just freezes up as soon as I open Skype.

    I never liked it much before on my other machines but with the Asus it is post MS takeover, no idea what they have done to it but as some one above said bring back messenger!

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Try to set a strong password on outlook.com...

    It will refuse passwords longer than 16 characters. It will refuse password containing "special" characters like an hyphen (!). You wonder how MS protects your passwords and how good is the password management code is, if it can't handle long password and "special" characters - and if they even use reversible encryption instead of hashes.

    No surprise Skype accounts were taken over...

    1. Ben Tasker

      Re: Try to set a strong password on outlook.com...

      Surely that should be

      ... characters like an hyphen (-).

      Yeah, sorry, felt like being an arse.

  19. MooseNC
    Gimp

    Understandable...

    "...calling for Skype to stop allowing the NSA to access its back end..."

    I'd also be upset if someone was accessing my back end.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Once again, the media is getting it wrong.

    I believe the correct term is "cracking".

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