Popular internet comedy platform Bustop TV is crying out for help as their Facebook account was hacked. The hackers also went on to remove all the admins of that page.
You have been removed from Bustop TV by Jessy Miller on Facebook Business Manager. This means you won't have access to any ad accounts or Pages you were working on as part of the business. If you don't think you should have been removed, please contact your Business Manager pic.twitter.com/oh4Xi56Y8f
— #TheOutsidersShortFilm (@bustoptv) April 22, 2018
The page no longer appears if you search for them via Facebook. What comes up instead is a Bustop TV clone with a mere 3 000 Facebook likes.
Bustop TV have no knowledge who this Jessy Miller is and the hackers seem to have made the page invisible or maybe they’ve taken it down entirely. It’s not really clear what their intentions are as of yet. This lack of activity makes it harder to predict who or what the motivation of these hackers is. Are they just having fun? Are they intentionally sabotaging the page to settle some scores? Maybe an inside job? It’s all a bit misty, to be honest…
We talked about Facebook hijacking last week… This is not that
The lack of activity probably indicates that it is not similar to the Facebook hijacking extension we reported last week. The intentions of that extensions are more clear and predictable whereas this looks like something that has been done by a human.
In the early hours of today the online media entity took to Twitter to inform their audience of the troubles they were facing on their Facebook platform:
Dear Friends our Facebook page has been hacked and all the admin have been removed. We have lost control with Facebook page. Those who can help us recover control plz help.
They also tweeted to Facebook’s official Twitter account seeking assistance:
Dear @facebook our official page have been hacked and all the admins been removed.Please help.
— #TheOutsidersShortFilm (@bustoptv) April 22, 2018
Bustop TV’s best bet might be reaching out to Facebook support and reporting this incident, which I hope they have already done.
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8 comments
This is not hacking.
Again, using passwords like *Birthday* or *ChildsName* or *MovieHero* is just being reckless and such accounts deserve to be taken over.
Guessing a simple Facebook password is not hacking.
Sir Van Lee, I thought hacking was gaining unauthorized access to a computer but it seems I was wrong. Educate us, please!
I hope it is clear now.
Let me explain.
The meaning of the word that best applies here is this:
“to circumvent security and break into (a network, computer, file,etc.), usually with malicious intent“
The key word is circumvent. If you guessed the password, you didn’t circumvent the security – you used it the way it was designed to be used.
A correlative example can be found in most criminal laws. There’s trespassing (being where you do not have permission to be) and forced/illegal entry (circumventing physical/electronic security so that you can be where you do not have permission to be). It’s not uncommon for both charges to be filed against a perpetrator when, for instance, someone breaks down the back door to enter a home.
I think that same nuanced approach can be illustrative here. If you didn’t break anything to gain access, then it’s just electronic “trespassing” whereas we may normally think of a brute force approach (as others have mentioned) as hacking.
*Adapted from a security expert in computer systems.
You can talk to any experts from McAfee, Avast, Linux. They’ll tell you the same.
It’s all in the semantics.
Interesting stuff and is definitely a more informative definition. But our job as media is to talk to everyone and anyone. If we look at things from very technical standpoints we would alienate readers and only appeal to a very specific set of people who understand these issues in depth (like yourself). Thanks for the feedback and insight which I’m sure will be useful to many readers who come across this post.
So, you do admit to publishing half-researched articls with misleading titles just to drive viewership up for your site by enticing the average tech-person then?
Uuuuuhm, that’s not really what I’m saying… Maybe I wasn’t as clear as I intended, but what I meant is we try not to get too technical as that alienates readers
The page is still available but with a different URL. https://www.facebook.com/BUSTOP01/ . I think who ever hijacked the page changed the URL and removed all admin. There is even a post from 1 hour ago.