A Weiner Is Not Andrew Breitbart Or The Village

Old Weinergate theory:  It's a hoax.  Shut it.

New Weinergate Theory:  Weiner told the press to go frak themselves yesterday, so we're now saying he's guilty of something.

Weiner’s actions raise questions: At first glance, it was easy to dismiss the story that a lewd photo to a young woman had come from Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D-NY) Twitter account. The explanation: Weiner’s account was hacked, and that seems like a common thing these days. But the congressman’s actions over the past 24 hours have raised more questions than answered them. For one thing, he hired an attorney. Second, and more importantly, he refused to answer reporters’ simple question on whether or not he sent the photo. Question: Was it from you or not? Weiner’s non-answer: “If I were giving a speech to 45,000 people and someone in the back threw a pie or yelled out an insult, I would not spend the next two hours of my speech responding to that pie or insult.” Third, he refused to answer why he was following the young woman on Twitter. Here’s this truism about Washington scandals: If someone is guilty, it’s never an isolated incident. Weiner has now put himself in a position of having to prove innocence -- which is never a good place to be for a politician, especially one who resides in the media capital of the world.

So sayeth Chuck Todd's crew at MSNBC, so shall it now be the "truth".  Andrew Breitbart?  Totally believable.  Anthony Weiner?  Dirty liar.  Also he's following someone on Twitter, which is illegal when a Democrat does it.

You guys should have stuck with the first assumption, because one of Joe Cannon's readers over at Cannonfire has figured out how the hoax was pulled off and has reproduced the method.  The vulnerability was in the yfrog.com picture service and not Twitter.

Not only that. Believe it or not, when an outsider sends a pic to someone else's Yfrog account in this fashion, the action creates a message in the "twitterstream." The message seems to originate with the Twitter account holder -- but it doesn't. It comes from somewhere else -- from someone mailing a picture to the account holder.

This is a serious security flaw in the design of Yfrog and Twitter. It allows a malicious outsider to "spoof" a tweet that seems to come from someone else.

Click on the image below (to enlarge it) and examine the "twitterstream." You'll see what I mean.

Please understand that I have never sent a single tweet in my entire life.

The first two instances were created automatically, when I uploaded those first two test pictures to Yfrog (as outlined in previous posts). The third instance was created when milowent sent a pic to my Yfrog address.

Both the tweet and the image seem to originate with me, but they did not.

This was the perfect frame. We know it was a frame because of the URL address beneath the header -- or rather, the lack thereof in the Weiner "crotch shot" screen cap.

Oops.  A little detective work seems to indicate that using the Yfrog.com vulnerability is a much, much more likely explanation as to what really happened.  So yes, that could explain why Weiner lawyered up, too.  So would I, I'd want to know what my rights and legal recourse options were if I were a public figure like Rep. Weiner is.

So, somebody want to explain to me how this isn't a hit job on one of the most outspoken liberals in Congress?

Ahh, but I have to keep the Democrat Stupidity tag because Weiner keeps refusing to say that the picture isn't of him.  Sigh.



If this is something as stupid as an old girlfriend getting revenge, or someone hacking the guy's hard drive because hey, he kept a picture of his junk on it, admitting to that would actually be better in the long run than the long, slow death of his career by Breitbart and News Corp.

[UPDATE]  Looks like A. Weiner will set the record straight on The Rachel Maddow Show tonight.