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Article from Rik Ferguson
Filed under: Hacking,Web 2.0 | RSS 2.0 | TB | Tags: compromise, Facebook, web | 16 Comments
A group of Turkish pranksters enlisted the help of their fellow message board users to mount a large scale linguistic assault on Facebook, resulting in red faces all round.
A post on the Inci Sözlük discussion forum describes the plan for abusing the Facebook translate application for the amusement of the discussion board members and it seems, the attack was a complete success.
A selection of 56 words and phrases that are commonly used across the Facebook platform, words and phrases such as “Like” or “Your message could not be sent because the user is offline” had their Turkish translations, erm… “improved” The attackers abused the official Facebook Translate interface, a crowdsourcing method for improving the linguistic accuracy of the site. Discussion forum members then went on to provide enough votes to push these translations into use for anyone viewing Facebook in Turkish resulting in some very red faces. The terms of course were offensive and insulting, some may have found them amusing, not I of course!
The word “Like” for example was substituted for another word that rhymes with Luck but begins with an F. The familiar notification in Facebook chat “Your message could not be sent because the user is offline” became “Your message could not be sent because of your tiny penis”
"Your message could not be sent because of your tiny penis"
Facebook rolled back the unwanted translations during the day and the Facebook Translate application is offline for many languages, although it is not clear if this is related.
It is interesting to note the fully automated nature of this crowdsourced method, it certainly seems as though the replacement translations did not go past any human eyes before going live. Perhaps there were possibilities here for criminals to take advantage of by substituting obfuscated URLs for the popular words. Perhaps it is fortunate that the hole has been exposed through a prank in the first instance and not something more nefarious.
Any online service, whether it’s transaltion or reputation services, which solicits user generated content would be well advised to quality check that content before going live with it.
| Terminologia etc. » » Scherzetti (o scherzacci?) di localizzazione: Friday, 30. July 2010 um 8:01 am |
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[...] Nell’interfaccia turca, alcuni dei termini e dei messaggi di errore più comuni erano stati sostituiti da versioni molto più “creative”, ad es. l’impossibilità di inviare un messaggio a un utente perché offline veniva invece attribuita alle dimensioni ridotte del proprio pene. Tutti i dettagli in CounterMeasures. [...] |
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| Dem Pixel hat mich gerade zum lachen gebracht... - Seite 56: Friday, 30. July 2010 um 1:31 pm |
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[...] [...] |
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| Happy bitchday from Facebook | IT Security, Hacking, Vulnerability alerts, IT Leadership and more: Friday, 30. July 2010 um 2:34 pm |
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[...] the way, the Turkish translation version of Facebook was also abused in a similar way changing messages such as Your message could not be sent because the user is [...] |
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| Paul Wilson: Friday, 30. July 2010 um 10:39 pm |
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Reminds one of the “Hungarian phrase book” sketch in Monty Python, where bungled translations led to an assault and a court trial for the publisher. |
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| Ellie K: Saturday, 31. July 2010 um 6:56 am |
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I saw your article on The Register yesterday, very good catch: Turkish 4chan! A question though: you have a trackback from Twitter, multi-tweet actually (I’m surprised there weren’t even more though as this truly is very funny), it appears here in your countermeasures dot trendmicro dot eu blog. However, the date is shown as My question: Why is there a 3-month gap in the timestamp, prior to your initial announcement? I’ve seen that on Picasa and a Yahoo News item, but only once for each. It’s a personal favorite QA check of mine, actually. Sorry for this long comment, certainly edit or delete it, as it clutters your elegant blog. But please, do you know the answer to my question? I’m very curious. |
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| Kurioses Übersetzungs-Streich: Fuck-Attacke auf Facebook |: Sunday, 1. August 2010 um 4:20 pm |
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[...] sollte für gute Qualität der Texte in sämtlichen Sprachen sorgen. An sich gute Idee, aber eine türkische Community sah das [...] |
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| Leonardo Musumeci » Blog Archive » Happy bitchday da Facebook: Monday, 2. August 2010 um 10:47 am |
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[...] anche la versione turca della traduzione di Facebook è stata ingannata in modo simile cambiando i messaggi come questo: Il vostro messaggio non ha potuto essere [...] |
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| Lonesome Walker - Blog Archiv » Türkischer Humor: Monday, 2. August 2010 um 11:53 am |
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[...] Guckst Du hier. [...] |
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| Anonymous: Monday, 2. August 2010 um 6:08 pm |
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[...] [...] |
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| Tuerkische Facebook-Uebersetzung: Peinliche Fehler durch Crowdsourcing: Tuesday, 3. August 2010 um 1:40 pm |
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[...] nicht selbst von dem Online-Eintrag überzeugen, eine kleine Entschädigung gibt es dennoch: Ein Blogbeitrag von Ferguson zeigt einen screenshot der Übersetzung von „“Your message could not be sent [...] |
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| Facebook manipuliert » Net Whisperer /beta: Wednesday, 4. August 2010 um 4:29 pm |
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[...] Werden genug Vorschläge für ein Wort gemacht, wird dies auch öffentlich verwendet. Der Sicherheitsdienstleister Trend Micro berichtet jetzt darüber das diese Funktion von einem türkischen Forum ausgenutzt wurde um [...] |
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| crowdsourcing: mind the crap « tossed in translation, too: Thursday, 5. August 2010 um 5:24 pm |
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[...] here’s the next step documented: a gang of pals gets together and decides to change a number of entries to a more… let us say [...] |
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| Rik Ferguson: Monday, 16. August 2010 um 8:05 am |
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Hi Flo, truth is I was trying to be amusing, looks like I failed with you :) |
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| Telcommunity, la Comunidad de las Telecomunicaciones » Blog Archive » Travesura en Facebook: malas traducciones: Wednesday, 1. September 2010 um 11:00 pm |
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[...] http://countermeasures.trendmicro.eu/facebook-prank-lost-in-translation/ [...] |
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Wednesday, 28. July 2010 um 6:50 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rik Ferguson, Jovi Umawing, Erlend Oftedal, Fundamentals, Steve Gold and others. Steve Gold said: RT @rik_ferguson: "Your message could not be sent because of your tiny penis" – http://bit.ly/a0gDMt – New blog (Facebook prank) — eek! [...]