NEW YORK, N.Y. (SatireWire.com) – Investigators who discovered hackers stole millions of user passwords from Facebook and other web sites said today account hijacking may finally explain the massive number of mind-numbing Facebook posts that appear on the site every day.
“It’s clear that malicious individuals have gotten into these accounts and, posing as the real users, posted the most useless and arbitrary things they could think of,” said CyberPicket CEO Marvin Distin. “How else would you explain a post like, ‘Another pretty sunset’ or ‘Went shopping today?’ Ordinary people wouldn’t do that. Obviously. It must be the work of some twisted hackers who get a sadistic kick out of filling the Internet with nothing.”
The stolen usernames and passwords from Facebook, Twitter and others, found on a server in the Netherlands, come from around the globe and have been collected over several years, according to CyberPicket. Facebook said it has reset the passwords for users whose accounts were compromised, but researchers are suspicious of that claim.
“It’s not fixed because these inane posts keep appearing,” said Distin. “Things like, ‘Eating breakfast at the Waffle House just outside Charlotte.’ ‘Looking forward to the weekend!’ These hackers must think we’re stupid.”
As an example, Distin cited a recent post by Facebook user Kent Siboben of Lindale, Ill., who posted a picture of his new mailbox and wrote ‘New mailbox!’ above it. “I’m sure Mr. Siboben would never do that himself,” Distin said.
However, reached via phone, Siboben admitted that he had posted the image. “Yeah, that was my new mailbox,” he said. “I thought it was, well, I don’t know what. Hey, a bunch of people ‘liked’ it.”
“My God, this is worse than I thought,” responded Distin. “The hackers have even infiltrated user phone numbers and are pretending to be actual people.”
According to security experts, the majority of hacked accounts found on the server had “absurdly simple” passwords associated with them, the most common being “123456,” followed by “123456789,” “1234,” “password” and “12345.” While some have suggested this is how hackers got into the accounts in the first place, Distin said it is more likely the infiltrators simplified the passwords.
“Actual people – those who knew anything about the Internet, anything at all – would never use ‘password’ as a password,” he said. “No, the hackers must have gotten in and changed the passwords to make it appear as if there are literally millions of incredibly moronic people on the Internet. Fortunately, this is so far from reality that we can see right through it.”
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