Justin Rood On The Lieberman Web Site Crash

Justin Rood of TPM Muckrakers has two more articles on the crashed Lieberman web site.  To his credit, he does not waste his time or ours with input from the various lefty bloggers; instead, he talks to real web hosting pros, who seem to be relatively agenda-free.

The bottom line, as I read it - Lieberman could have spent more and gotten more, but he had a reasonable system and something mysterious happened.

Let me reassure TPM Muckraker fans, however - the headline writers know what their audience wants, and are proud to deliver.  The second story is billed "Experts Agree: Lieberman's Net Service Could Have Been Better", and who among us can not say the same about our own software, car, house, and baseball team?

Oh, well - this was also funny, in a picayune way:

...some said the software used by the consultants was nonstandard and indicitave (sic) of less-than-expert personnel...

Uh huh.  Well, I think this is indicative of TPM Muckraker's unwillingness to put the standard effort into their editing process; experts agree their spell check software "could have been better".

Comments

[Seixon]

It's funny that liberals take the idea that "You Get What You Pay For" to the hoop. I thought that whole notion was spawned by evil capitalists? Does that mean Linux should not be used since it's free? Does that mean that Movable Type and Wordpress should be avoided?

I thought if there was anyone that would stand behind the notion that spending more doesn't always make something better, it would be liberals. Or... actually... I guess they do want to throw money at virtually any problem and hope it goes away. Of course, that's what any politician does when they can't be bothered with actually solving a problem.

In summary, I find it incredible that the supposedly open source loving liberals would take the view that you have to pay a zillion dollars to get good hosting. You don't. It does provide a really good cover for whatever actually did happen, though.

[Semanticleo]

"It does provide a really good cover for whatever actually did happen, though."

Ironical, ain't it?

The Plausible Denialists are fiddling with
posts on the hacking of Holy Joe, while the
Specter Bill looms closer to the horizon of Rome's incandescent glow.

[Jimmy]

Why is there any mystery left?

Shouldn't Lieberman be able to reconstruct exactly what happened here?

[SunnyDay]

What happened should be recorded in the server log. However, having had that kind of hosting myself (if, indeed, it's the inexpensive package from a big server farm hosting service) I can say, they will not go to the trouble of checking their server to find out.

[Seixon]

Lieberman's site was hosted by a reseller. So is my blog. There's nothing wrong with that as long as you know what you're doing. I don't really know what exactly happened to Lieberman's site. It does not seem to have anything to do with a bandwidth issue, since almost all the other sites hosted by that reseller were fine, and I doubt the reseller (rumored to be a friend of Lieberman's campaign manager) would have set a bandwidth limit on their site.

Something else must have happened, and it sounds like some hacker found a vulnerability in Lieberman's site and managed to screw it all up.

All of the theories that the Kos Kidz were throwing out there were just that, theories. I don't see how any of them hold any water for the reasons I mentioned above. Also, I checked Alexa, and Lieberman's site did not have a sudden surge of traffic that day. So that is definitely not the explanation, an explanation that is already straining credibility as I already mentioned.

The truth is that Kos, me, you, we don't know what happened. The only one who pretended to know, though, was Kos and his anti-Lieberman allies.

Just like with the terror plot today, the Kos Kidz came up with alternate explanations for the Lieberman site outage that were not based on anything other than convenient, partisan speculation.

[Semanticleo]

"Just like with the terror plot today, the Kos Kidz came up with alternate explanations for the Lieberman site outage that were not based on anything other than convenient, partisan speculation."

So goes the perpetual game of 'pong'.

[Jimmy's Attack Rabbit]

Sen. Stevens probably knows a plumber who can figure out what happened to Sen. Lieberman's internet tubes.

[SunnyDay]

whois shows "TransferGuard LOCK Status => DISABLED"

site could have been hijacked. I've had people try to do that - mine stays locked. But if someone managed to get my email password, initiated a transfer, logged into my email and verified the transfer, then deleted the email... voila! The site would disappear.

[Tom Maguire]

Something else must have happened, and it sounds like some hacker found a vulnerability in Lieberman's site and managed to screw it all up.

Based on an excerpt from one of the article and my own keen sense of computer problems, I am betting it was a date-sensitive virus type program. Depending on when (and in what module) the virus was loaded, restoring the system from backup swould not be a solution, unless very old backups were used.

The relevant excerpt:

A hacked module -- a form, Hubbell theorized -- was generating thousands of emails to joe2006.com addresses. Even after removing various functions from the site, the problems persisted, Hubbell told me. "There were multiple spam attacks," he recalled. "It seemed like it was internally spamming itself, and there was also potentially an outside source that was hitting it."

"There's. . . some investigation going on to as to seeing where the [outside] spamming came from," Hubbell said. "That's offsite, more on where the Lieberman committee is at."

Of course, maybe a DOS attack was staged to coincide with the virus timestamp, just to muddy the waters.

[Patton]

Given what we've seen in England, I am just glad Ned Lamont will bring with him to Washington his extensive background in computer automation for gated communities.

You have seen security until you've tried to drive into a gated community in Connecticut!!

[larwyn]

They have no shame and no guilt.
Too tired to bring a Wittaker Chambers quote to fingertips or
to come up with the words for this sequence of posts from:
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/

Mike Wallace Exalts Sociopathic, Holocaust Denying, Jew Hater

I thought this lib retired?
In a rare interview with a Western reporter, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (R) talks to Mike Wallace at the Presidential Palace in Tehran August 8, 2006, for a '60 MINUTES' report. (REUTERS/CBS NEWS 60 MINUTES)

How crazy is this?
Mike Wallace praises the nutjob Ahmadinejad who would "Wipe Israel from the Map!" in his interview to be aired tonight:

Of Ahmadinejad, Wallace said, "He's an impressive fellow, this guy. He really is. He's obviously smart as hell."

Wallace said he was surprised to find that the Iranian president was still a college professor who taught a graduate-level course.

"You'll find him an interesting man," he said. "I expected more of a firebrand. I don't think he has the slightest doubt about how he feels ... about the American administration and the Zionist state. He comes across as more rational than I had expected."
Obviously, "intellectualism" trumps "soul" for Mick Wallace.

Intellectualism is very important to Wallace...
Mike Wallace slammed President Bush on 60 Minutes during an interview with Bob Woodward in April 2004 for his distain of intellectuals (via Media Research Center)........

And then there is:

Natan Sharansky Blogger Teleconference -2-

held another of its Newsmaker blogger conference calls today from Jerusalem

"Natan Sharansky believes that the truest expression of democracy is the ability to stand in the middle of a town square and express one's views without fear of imprisonment."

Read both. There is a clear line.

[larwyn]

***WHittaker***

[Lew Clark]

Just remember, there was a big learning curve for the Lieberman camp. He has always run against Republicans. So no experience with slashed tires, broken windows, voter intimidation, hacked websites, etc. I don't think they had the time to realize that they were running against the Democrat candidate of the nutroots and prudence would require guarding against any and all criminal activity. If Lieberman wins the general election, I hope he has developed some understanding of what conservative candidates face every day from these scum.

[maryrose]

LewClark:
I agree with you. The minute I heard something had happened to his web-site when Joe himself made mention of it in his running as an Independent speech I knew something nefarious was afoot. Just like the slashed van tires in Milwaukee in 2004 somebody is up to no good to try and get some advantage over a rival candidate. This is a real shame. Lamont isn't worthy to shine Lieberman's shoes. Because Joe is a nice guy other men who lack character like Gore and Chris Dodd and their ilk feel they can treat him disrespectfully.Hillary and Kerry's true colors are on display as well... Not a pretty picture.

[maryrose]

Larwyn:
Mike Wallace has suffered from depression and bipolar disorder. When he goes off like this I just attribute it to his form of mental illness. His perceptions are off or askew at times.

[SunnyDay]

Wallace is an embarrassment.

[DC]

And those losers at the RNC "could have done better" by not photshopping a HITLER mustache on Howard Dean. They've compared the Democrats to Nazis!! Where's the outrage!!??? The RNC should stand up and fire whomever did this.

[fsadfd]

Good evening. Working hard, in this busy time for you called. This is my friend and the Boke,just established, the time is not long. The issue here isthat everybody can see my Boke, Ha-ha, raising some visibility, which caused trouble to ask your forgiveness! We all hope to see. Please! 笑傲苍穹博客 晚秋稻草博客 绽放笑容 寂寞无痕博客 思念秋风博客 谷歌和百度的博客 小城故事专栏 流淌的河水 月是故乡明 拥有幸福 爱是什么 笑傲江湖 真爱无敌 幽默坏蛋博客 醉看红尘 诱惑的雨夜 热的发抖 记忆中的故乡 独自去徘徊 都市流浪人 漂泊的船 生命的感悟 秋日的午后 笑看天下 落花无泪

[topsecretk9]

--And those losers at the RNC "could have done better" by not photshopping a HITLER mustache on Howard Dean. They've compared the Democrats to Nazis!! Where's the outrage!!??? The RNC should stand up and fire whomever did this.--

NO DICE DC...Years of Bush photoshop and Video Hitlerism by the DNC and Move brothers that you really could give a fig about and now you are outraged?

Yeah....tell it the hand.