Navy Facebook Account Hacked To Stream 'Age of Empires'

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The U.S. Navy has lost control of the official Facebook page for its destroyer-class warship, the USS Kidd. Someone has hacked the page and, for the past two days, done nothing but stream Age of Empires. The first stream went on for four hours. As first reported by Task & Purpose, the USS Kidd lost control of its Facebook account at 10:26 p.m. on October 3. The destroyer class warship then streamed Age of Empires for four hours under the headline "Hahahahaha." It's since streamed Age of Empires five more times, each time for at least an hour. Whoever is playing sucks, because they never make it past the Stone Age. As of this writing, the six videos are still up and watchable. The Navy confirmed to Task & Purpose that it had been hacked, adding: "We are currently working with Facebook technical support to resolve the issue."

"hacked"

[The-Ixian]

Probably more like had a password of "Monkey123" and no MFA

Also, does each ship in the fleet have a FB account?

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[killhour]

Damnit, first this kid guesses it and now some random comment on Slashdot just puts it all out there for everyone to see! Sarge is gonna be pissed.

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[lactose99]

hunter2

oh damn

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[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

Have you heard about the gay whale? It bit the tail off a submarine and sucked all the seamen out.

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[BoogieChile]

I don't get it? All I see is a line of asterisks.

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[Krishnoid]

I think they were trying to make it easily hackable to send a coded message [beardedcoffeemonkey.com], actually, considering their recent performance [nbcnews.com] in defense simulations.

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[Joe_Dragon]

joshua

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[waspleg]

That was my first thought too, wtf do warships need with FB at all.

Did they get bricked in the outage like all the Oculus headsets?

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[GonzoPhysicist]

No need to hack it, just use a priest and *Wololo* it's yours!

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[Bradac_55]

No but retired ships running tours does. The Kidd has been retired a long time.

To explain a bit of history for you

[Inglix the Mad]

Age of Empires was released for sale on October 15th, 1997. A mere 8754 days later on October 3rd, 2021 at 10:26PM, Age of Empires became self-aware and started streaming using the US Navy's USS Kidd Facebook page. Things went downhill from there fairly rapidly.

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[The Optimizer]

I swear, the self-awareness code was deleted before we pushed out the release candidate build! /OG AoE Dev

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[Xenographic]

> Age of Empires was released for sale on October 15th, 1997.

That seems a bit off. Everyone knows that October 1, 1997 was the END DAY [sydlexia.com].

wtf?

[guygo]

I completely fail to understand why ANY taxpayer-owned military machine requires or should allow ANY social media accounts onboard.
What operational advantage does having a Facebook account give one?
What security vulnerabilities does having a Facebook account give one?
Absolutely absurd.

Re: wtf?

[ahoffer0]

I'll bite.

Ships are crewed by people. They share space and work together. They socialize. They build relationships and make memories. They might have served on the ship a decade ago but still feel attached enough to follow the ship's Facebook feed. That's why ships have social media accounts.

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[Orlando]

Then let a group of people set up and manage the page in their own time. Managing an 'official' page is a total waste of tax payer's money.

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[Retired Chemist]

I think it is supposed to me a recruiting tool and maybe for the families of the crew

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[The MAZZTer]

It's probably all for recruitment.

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[Calinous]

If a ship is now a museum, Facebook is (probably) the best place to put "How to reach us", "Opening hours", ...
If a ship is _not_ a museum, a ship's Facebook page can be. Pictures and stories from deployments, ... People getting in touch with old comrades...

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[CrimsonAvenger]

Because it's a convenient way to keep families up to date on things like when the ship will reach its homeport?

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[Bradac_55]

What's "Absolutely absurd" is posters not doing even a tiny bit of research on a subject.
Try looking up the USS Kidd, it's not a fleet ship it's been retired a long time.

Coincidence!

[swalker42]

I was playing Age of Empires at lunch today, but, no I wasn't streaming

force the hacker to join the navy or hardtime

[Joe_Dragon]

force the hacker to join the navy or do hard time.

Amusing hacking

[RogueWarrior65]

Malicious hacking is bad form. Amusing hacking is... well... amusing.

Track it down

[sjames]

They need to track this down quickly, it's time for a 'live fire exercise'.

Probably an exercise by another department

[crywolf]

My guess is that given the lack of posting other than streaming Age of Empires, it was a security audit by some other government agency. And now they're auditing how long it takes them to recover from it.

To be fair...

[argStyopa]

...a game of Age of Empires is likely vastly more entertaining and interesting than whatever crap was being hosted on the USS Kidd's facebook page anyway.

Ouch

[quantaman]

It's since streamed Age of Empires five more times, each time for at least an hour. Whoever is playing sucks, because they never make it past the Stone Age. As of this writing, the six videos are still up and watchable.

It's one thing to get pwned.

It's quite another thing to get pwned by a noob.

Sea Lord - You got to be Kidding !

[Canberra1]

Admiral sounds better than sea lord, but his lordship has said he will keelhaul the pirates for the sharks to finish off.

Why AoE?

[ElizabethGreene]

Wouldn't Sea of Thieves or Subnautica have been more appropriate?