Has Yfrog responded to yesterday's post?

Folks, if you check the comments for yesterday's post on l'affaire Weiner, you'll see that I've spent hours sparring with nitwits. This activity is not good for my disposition, so I'm going to take a bit of a rest. But one bit of important new news has come to my attention, thanks to reader milowent.

You may recall that he was the one who originally found the security flaw in Yfrog/Twitter -- a flaw that allows someone to upload a picture to someone else's Yfrog account without actually hacking into that account. The same flaw allows you to "spoof" Twitter messages, in order to make those messages seem to originate from someone else.

Apparently, Yfrog has figured out that a problem exists. Milowent attempted to post to Yfrog via email (as detailed in yesterday's post) and this is what he got:

Is this a temporary thing? Or are the folks behind Yfrog rethinking how they do business?

And if Yfrog is rethinking its policy, is it doing so in response to Weinergate?

I don't believe that they would change how they conduct their affairs based on my post -- even though that post got a lot of attention. It is possible that the security firm hired by Congressman Weiner contacted Yfrog. (Or should one say Imageshack? I believe Imageshack owns Yfrog.)

The point is this: If Yfrog filled the security hole at the request of Weiner's people, then my argument is proven. Yfrog would not have filled that hole unless that were the method by which someone loaded a photo onto Weiner's account.

Nobody can dispute that lots of people were able to replicate the experiment outlined in the previous post. My "gdowson153" account at Yfrog holds a lot of pictures now. I didn't put 'em there (except for the first two, as documented in previous posts). Nevertheless, those other images sure look like they came from me -- if you were to judge based on header information.

Similarly, there are a lot of tweets which look like they came from me -- yet I've never sent out a tweet to anyone in my life.

All of which proves that these folks at Gateway Pundit are silly billies. I've never seen such a hilarious attempt to bamboozle one's way past a problem.

They claim that my post was technically flawed. Check out their argument -- if you can call this an argument:

Yfrog, like every other service out there (including Twitter, WordPress, Flickr, Blogger, and Tumblr), has a photo upload service by email. If you are logged into your account, you have access to that email.

Uh...yeah. That was the freaking point, dude. (As noted above, Yfrog does not seem to have an upload service by email anymore. The interruption may or may not be temporary.)

Furthermore, if you authorize Yfrog to do so, you can post a picture to Twitter from the account using your secret email.

So. Congressman Weiner sent a picture of a dick to himself using a secret email account. Seems rather a complex way to go about it. Wouldn't it be easier to just, you know, look down?

When you sign into your yfrog account, you can do so with Twitter, which authorizes you to post to Twitter.

I will happily stipulate that signing in with Twitter authorizes one to post to Twitter.

It’s not a hack. It’s a security feature that requires you to be logged into Twitter to sign in, just like Facebook connect.

When did I say otherwise...?

If you go into your Twitter settings, you can find out if yfrog is authorized to post pictures to your account. It’s under Settings>Applications.

So? What does any of this have to do with the security hole that was the heart of yesterdays' post?

If the Gateway Punditeer is trying to argue that you can't post pictures to someone else's account using the trick mentioned yesterday -- then how the hell did all those outside pictures hop into my Yfrog account? Why are there so many tweets which seem to come from me, including tweets which look exactly like the one attributed to Weiner?

Gateway Pundit is trying to doubletalk his way out of a problem. Rest easy, Robert Preston -- we have a new Professor Harold Hill!

Oh, but it gets even funnier.

And Anthony Weiner tells us today that he has never even seen yfrog before that night.

This claim is bolstered by a quote from Wolf Blitzer's interview with Weiner. These are the allegedly damning words:

I mean, I’ll tell you what happened that night. I mean, I was literally there tweeting about hockey. For those of you who follow my Twitter, my bloody TiVo didn’t record enough time, so I missed the end of the Tampa Bay-Boston game. I’m a big hockey fan, and I tweet about hockey.

And I see this thing pop up. I immediately delete it. OK? I immediately delete the photo – I thought I deleted – I mean, I’m not a hundred percent sure – I deleted the photo and then this – this – without any password or anything, I was able to get into the account where this photograph was hosted somehow. And I deleted that and other photographs in there as well, although it was nothing very controversial in there. But I deleted everything, and I immediately tweeted “my system has been hacked.” You know, darn it.

At no point does Weiner say the words which GatewayPundit (and other rightists) have attributed to him. He does seem a bit hazy about the technology. That's not surprising.

Believe it or don't, the righties actually try to scry something sinister into the above quotation from Weiner! That's the biggest stretch since Reed Richards shook hands with Ralph Dibny.

I could go on. But -- as noted above -- I've already spent too many hours sparring with ninnies. You can see my retorts if you scan the comments appended to the previous post.

Alas, most of the righties won't read those retorts. They keep repeating the same nonsensical catch-phrases over and over. They're like Buddhists: Once they find a mantra, they keep chanting it.

(The Obots were pretty much the same way back throughout 2008. There was just no talking to those people.)

It's pretty obvious that the mindless mantra-chanters aren't going to read my responses. And if they aren't going to read what I have to say, why should I write? And why would they come here?

Nevertheless, I can't resist making a few final points:

1. Bella wins! As noted, a lot of people uploaded pics to the account of gdowson153. One of the images was pornographic; it was removed. Most of the others were funny. But the shot of my dog remains untoppable.

2. Was it illegal? Some people have said that Weiner must be guilty because he has not threatened to bring the "hacker" (who is not really a hacker) to justice. But I'm not at all sure that the exploitation of the Yfrog security hole was illegal. Technically, this act does not constitute "hacking," since the person framing Weiner did not guess the password and did not gain control of Weiner's account.

If you can cite a specific violation of the criminal code, please share with the rest of the class. I am all attention.

"But Weiner said he was hacked!" Roughly a gazillion rightists have shouted those words at me, as though they constitute some sort of really impressive argument. To which I answer: So? What else would he say? He didn't know about the security hole. Besides, he may define the term "hacking" more broadly than I would.

Could Weiner bring a civil suit? Conceivably. Hell, you can sue anyone over anything. But most lawyers would advise him not to sue for defamation or libel.

If Weiner's refusal to pursue a legal remedy constitutes an admission of guilt -- well, that logic cuts both ways, dunnit? I've said in public that I am positive that Dan Wolfe tried to frame a congressman. If Dan doesn't sue me, then he must be guilty...right?

A gazillion rightists have also told me: "Wolfe must be innocent. He has said that he welcomes an FBI investigation!" Well, jeez, what do you expect him to say? "I do not welcome an FBI investigation"?

The fact is, we're talking about a guy who hid his Twitter feed at almost the same moment he proclaimed that he has nothing to hide. He has given conflicting stories. He still can't explain why his browser cache doesn't have a 640x480 version of the crotch shot with the proper EXIF data.

And don't forget that this is also the guy whose behavior made poor Gennette so miserable.

3. Gennette's statement. Judging from the recent right-wing commentary, the righties now seem willing to take her statement at face value, as I always did. Well. Glad to hear that.

But if you accept that she is telling the truth, you can't pick and choose her words. She says that she never received an inappropriate communication from Weiner. Her story concurs with his statement that he sent her only boilerplate.

Are we really supposed to believe that a sitting congressman would send a picture of his crotch to a girl he has never met, never spoken to, and with whom he has never really communicated? A girl he knows nothing about? A girl whose photo he had never seen? A girl who (as far as he knew) might have been 78 years old?

Come off it. Even on IRC, people don't do that.

Let me guess what some of you are now dying to say: "Maybe she did send him a picture! Maybe they were in secret communication!"

If that's the way you think, then you're back to calling Gennette a liar, even though you have not one iota of evidence that she has lied about anything. In other words, you are victimizing her.

4. I thought Wolf Blitzer was pretty disgusting when he interviewed Weiner. He thinks that this sleazy attempt to smear the congressman gives him (Wolf) the right to ask if Weiner has ever in his life taken a photo of his own dick. Apparently, an attempted frame-up gives Wolf the right to go fishing. That's journalism?

I think the righties are pressing for a big-ass federal investigation because they want a fishing expedition. They like to fish. Remember Whitewater?

5. Cannonfire got huge traffic yesterday. That increase won't benefit me at all, since the site carries no paid advertising. (Except for the Adsense ads, which bring in maybe a hundred bucks a year. I keep the Adsense going mostly as a "thank you" to Google, the owner of Blogger.) The last time I got this kind of traffic was at the time of the "Bush bulge" controversy.

My ladyfriend tells me that the lesson is obvious: If you want a big public response, find a bulge to write about.

Traffic will settle into its normal pattern again very soon. Most bulges eventually go down.