As The Ends Justify Those Pesky Means

[billroper]

It appears that somebody decided to launch a DoS attack against Senator Lieberman's campaign website and e-mail service on the eve of Election Day. Now, as Brendan Loy -- who I discovered because he is also interested in hurricanes -- points out, using an inexpensive shared server for a critical campaign resource isn't necessarily the best choice, since it is more vulnerable.

But this sort of shit just pisses me off. And before you ask, it would piss me off if somebody did it to Lamont too. Or some other candidate that I didn't care for, because we don't need this sort of shit in our electoral process.

Maybe I'm just reading the wrong websites, but I don't see reports of this happening to candidates that I don't approve of.

Or maybe the ends do justify the means and I'm just an old fogey.

But I don't think so.

Comments

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Um. I completely agree with you. Just one thing -- it looks as if it might be an attempt to smear the Lamont campaign. Check here (http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/8/8/141421/9441) and especially here (http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/8/8/141421/9441).

[billroper]

Cool. Two broken links. :(

I did, however, read the two posts on dKos that Loy linked to and find them less than persuasive. It sounds like the folks who own the server dropped Lieberman's traffic in order to save the other websites on the shared server.

I don't think that Lamont's campaign did this, because it would have been acutely stupid for them to do it. Given that one of Lamont's well-known supporters published a photo of Lieberman in blackface, I find it entirely believable that some Lamont supporter thought this would be a good idea.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I'm not even gonna try to defend the blackface thing, because it was indefensible, most liberal blogs said so at the time, and Jane at FireDogLake (who did it) apologized.

I don't think it was malicious at all. I think they just didn't have enough bandwidth. Moreover, Lamont's campaign has offered to send their tech guru to help, and they've got a link on their site to the Google cache for Lieberman's site.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

And, I apologize -- I put the same link twice. The first one was supposed to be this (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/8/8/153827/3493).

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Further, this post (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/8/144119/5628) seems to have more detailed tech info.

[billroper]

At least one of those two posts I'd seen, as I followed the links from Brendan Loy's website as referenced in my original post.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Ah. I just check dKos a lot. :)

[billroper]

I check Instapundit a lot, myself. :)

[giza.livejournal.com]

Eh, maybe it's just me, but I had some issues with the tone of that post. It really smacks of knowing all of the answers, which kinda rubs me the wrong way.

Among other things, I counted 4 uses of the word "incompetent" in the post. It kinda smacks of the egotistical attitude of, "I'm so smart and these other people are total morons", which is something I've seen quite a bit of in the geek community.

The poster seemed to be attacking Lieberman for having a "low budget" webserver. I really don't see how that's relevant. If they found inexpensive webhosting, I say more power to them.

I take serious issue with the fact that the author port scanned the machine. That is generally considered a nono nowadays, at least without the owner's consent of the machine that is being scanned. He may have violated his ISP's AUP by doing the port scan.

He proceeds to jump to conclusions about how "MySQL and IRC shouldn't be publically accessible". It is quite possible that there are legitimate reasons for this. Maybe not, but I'd prefer to give the web host the benefit of the doubt.

I disagree that a Firewall is somehow "necessary" on a UNIX box. It might be helpful to have, but one can accomplish lots of with things like TCP Wrappers and Portsentry.

So yeah, maybe I'm just bitter or in a particular bad mood today, but I'm taking that post with a grain of salt.

</rant>

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's just as possible that someone on the other side did it, in hopes of making sure Lamont wins because if Lieberman runs as an independent, he may well split the Democratic vote.

[billroper]

It's also possible that members of Al Qaeda did it, but I find that an unlikely explanation as well.

[(Anonymous)]

Actually, it's just as possible that someone on the other side did it, in hopes of making sure Lamont wins because if Lieberman runs as an independent, he may well split the Democratic vote.

The web site foolishness will be forgotten by the day after tomorrow. It's dirty but unimportant.

It's been reeeeeal interesting listening to the maneuvering in both parties and amongst the punditorati today. Connecticut Dems are lining up behind the candidate. The CT Sec'y of State wants a sore loser law put on the books. Some D's in other states are either growing instant backbones or pandering to the new Conventional Wisdom, the difference being in the eye of the beholder. The R's are desperately trying to explain the Lamont win with some reason, any reason, except the candidate's main theme.

Closer to home, even Tammy stands a good chance to win. But Lieberman is history. He'll never pull off Weicker's trick, and that doesn't mean getting on the board of WWE.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Actually, this behavior IS indefensible -- I do not condone DoS attacks, period. But there've been similar things from the party of candidates you DO approve of, y'know. (And I don't recall you defending it)

[billroper]

Could you cite one please? I don't recall having seen one, to be honest, but I could well have missed it.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Sure.

As I said, I do NOT believe you have ever condoned this sort of behavior by either side.

[madfilkentist]

OK, but that's a telephone DoS attack. I'm from New Hampshire, and have been following that story (and hope that the people responsible all get punished, even though I favored Sununu over Shaheen), but it didn't come to mind in the context under discussion, and perhaps didn't to Bill for the same reason.

[billroper]

Understood. Yes, I'd forgotten about that particular case, although I remember hearing about it at the time.

The word "idiots" leaps to mind when thinking of the people who did it.

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

Since it's after the polls close, there's no way I can get to the various links proffered, but I will say that I was able to ping joe2006.com just fine at the same time that the http server was down.

That doesn't look like a DOS attack to me.