Earlier I posted about the reports of the phishing attacks against Twitter. Apparently high profile accounts i.e Obama, Britney where hacked. The good side is that the Hackers have a sense of humor, the bad thing is that they have been fixed. 

It looks like the vector of attack here some tools that where used by support, to help users change their email. I guess that the hacker was able to change the email of the accounts, change the password and login. Makes me wonder if somebody in the support team had something to do with this?

I guess they should go back and but a BETA tag like most Web2.0 sites, at least that is a good excuse (Gmail is still BETA).

Image source ReadWriteWeb

According to the Twitter blog, phishing scams targeted at Twitter users, have appeared. If you wonder what scammers are trying to achieve with it? Well think about it, there is a lot of value in Twitter account. Maybe not on the average Joe Twitter user, however there are a lot of high profile Twitter users, which account info may be of value. Just by having the president of the USA there, is worth trying the scam. Imagine if they could get the account of any high profile user  or with thousands of followers ? Some interesting social engineering could be done against the followers of the accounts hijacked.

At the end of the day, scammers may be betting on users using the same password on all their sites. Actually it makes sense, think about it, it takes some effort to come up with a new password that you can remember. And since people might think, that their Twitter account is not worth the effort of a new password, then why not use the “standard Web 2.0” password. Just shows how valuable are login information to popular Web 2.0 sites, even if the sites itself is not making money, doesn’t mean scammers can make money out of them.

Blogging and social media in general, is about the conversation. You post, others read and a few comment. Sometimes readers will discuss (or fight) about the topic. However, most of the time I see the author just speaking his mind and “talking”. Maybe the author is busy or he just is not arose intellectually by the comments to even bother. We are irrational beings so its a challenge to guess what is going through the mind of the authors and why they don’t comment much. However is ironic that people say that blogging is about he conversation, when authors are shouting. Its more like:

hellooooooooooooo!!!! I’m here..!! now that you know I exist, read this!!!! anybody please read it!!!!

You might think that is the case of G to The Square, since I don’t have much readers in my blog. However, in my defense, any comment I get a reply, although people don’t reply back, still its a “three way handshake“. I post, somebody comments and I comment back (see image bellow).

Three way handshake of conversation in blogs (too much net stuff in my mind )

Then again what is a conversation? Based on the Merriam-Webster dictionary a conversation is defined as:

oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas

In the Internet there is no oral exchange as traditional conversation, instead we have written words as a medium on exchanging our sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas. Apparently this exchange happens in less, traditional and immediate ways. Authors post their ideas and after some minutes, hours or days, readers who may be loyal, syndicated, occasional visitor or “stumbler” (thanks to a search engine, post a comment). When the comments hit the right tone then the conversation start. What I mean the by right tone? Conversation is not simply agreeing with the author or telling her that she is pretty, but actually expressing our:

sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas

And there is where the conversation is, in the comments: where there is substance, where at full throttle readers express their mind in a attempt to prove a point or simply to take a stand. On the other side of the coin, the author is just simply expressing himself, because he doesn’t reply to the comments just fills his pocket with the “ad money” and his ego offcoarse. And to those that really reply to their readers.. then I salute you, for honoring the essence of blogging: the conversation.