FBI probe: Lieberman campaign to blame for crashing own Web site

[kjoe]

FBI probe: Lieberman campaign to blame for crashing own Web site

By
There are not many politicians I believe are as despicable as Joe Lieberman. But he is no Ralph nader, I guess. The fbi has also ruled me out as a suspect.kj



Brian Lockhart (from the Advocate)
Staff Writer
Article Launched: 04/09/2008 01:00:00 AM EDT





A federal investigation has concluded that U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's 2006 re-election campaign was to blame for the crash of its Web site the day before Connecticut's heated Aug. 8 Democratic primary.
The FBI office in New Haven found no evidence supporting the Lieberman campaign's allegations that supporters of primary challenger Ned Lamont of Greenwich were to blame for the Web site crash.
Lieberman, who was fighting for his political life against the anti-Iraq war candidate Lamont, implied that joe2006.com was hacked by Lamont supporters.
"The server that hosted the joe2006.com Web site failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured. There was no evidence of (an) attack," according to the e-mail.
A program that could have detected a legitimate attack was improperly configured, the e-mail states.
"New Haven will be administratively closing this investigation," it concluded.
The e-mail, dated Oct. 25, 2006, was included in a technical packet of information recently sent to The Advocate in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act filed in late 2006 with the offices of state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor.
The Advocate filed the requests after Blumenthal and O'Connor closed the case but declined to divulge details. They stated only that they found no evidence that Lamont supporters were to blame. Visitors who tried to access Lieberman's site at the time received a message calling on
Lamont to "make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately."
The Lieberman-Lamont race captured national and international attention.
Blumenthal denied The Advocate's FOI request on the grounds it was a federal matter, and it took more than a year for the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice to respond.
The Lieberman campaign alleged it was the target of a "denial of service attack," which can involve bombarding a Web site with external communications to slow it or render it useless.
"Our Web site consultant assured us in the strongest terms possible that we had been attacked," former Lieberman campaign spokesman Dan Gerstein said in December 2006.
According to the FBI memo, the site crashed because Lieberman officials continually exceeded a configured limit of 100 e-mails per hour the night before the primary.
"The system administrator misinterpreted the root cause," the memo stated. "The system administrator finally declared the server was being attacked and the Lieberman campaign accused the Ned Lamont campaign. The news reported this on Aug. 8, 2006, causing additional Web traffic to visit the site. "The additional Web traffic then overwhelmed the Web server. . . . Web traffic pattern analysis reports and Web logging that was available did not demonstrate traffic that was indicative of a denial of service attack."

[Moon Man]

How dare anyone attack the integrity of such a principled man as Joe Lieberman?

Moon

[kjoe]

How dare anyone attack the integrity of such a principled man as Joe Lieberman?

Moon

I do. Because he cost Gore the 2000 election, and gave us.....what followed.

[dredbyrd]

Ned's campaign manager, who is also my boss in our real jobs asked me when I arrived at the "undisclosed location" (what we called the war room) if I was responsible.

"That depends .... "

He wasn't amused.

He then asked me if I would go with a cameraman to Joe's HQ and offer my technical assistance to help fix their site.

But I was too chicken.

[kjoe]

Ned's campaign manager, who is also my boss in our real jobs asked me when I arrived at the "undisclosed location" (what we called the war room) if I was responsible.

"That depends .... "

He wasn't amused.

He then asked me if I would go with a cameraman to Joe's HQ and offer my technical assistance to help fix their site.

But I was too chicken.

You could have won a pullets are reporters prize.

[Prngr44]

Hahaha. As someone who works with a lot of systems like this, this really cracks me up.

[kjoe]

Hahaha. As someone who works with a lot of systems like this, this really cracks me up.

As someone who wrecks a lot of systems like this, my reaction is a bemused BFD.

[hansolo]

John McCain is recently spotted whispering in Lieberman's ear to say "Al Qaeda is responsible for my website crash"

[kjoe]

Johm McCain is recently spotted whispering in Lieberman's ear to say "Al Qaeda is responsible for my website crash"

fixed.

Johm McCain for President

The McCain camp misspells its candidate's name in a web ad.

[Burrito Brother]

I do. Because he cost Gore the 2000 election, and gave us.....what followed.

Gore made his choice of VP candidate not the other way around.

[TTB]

So he has a moron web site administrator who caused the problem and then misdiagnosed it...but somehow this reflects on the candidate's principles?

Only on the Lounge....oh...wait that's not fair I'm sure they have similar thoughts about this on the Daily Kos

[TTB]

Hahaha. As someone who works with a lot of systems like this, this really cracks me up.

No shit....I'm working with a team building a new custom application on a server running Tomcat that is misconfigured and it freaking locks up every damn day with the most minimal traffic.

[Moon Man]

So he has a moron web site administrator who caused the problem and then misdiagnosed it...but somehow this reflects on the candidate's principles?

Only on the Lounge....oh...wait that's not fair I'm sure they have similar thoughts about this on the Daily Kos

Well, considering the fact that Joe's people blamed the 'attack' on Ned Lamont, yeah.

Moon

[TTB]

I do. Because he cost Gore the 2000 election, and gave us.....what followed.

No he didn't.

Gore ran a crappy campaign and got beat by a chimp. Blame the real source of the loss. Gore himself with a helping hand from Clinton's pecker.

[Mr. Goalie]

Well, considering the fact that Joe's people blamed the 'attack' on Ned Lamont, yeah.

Moon

Lamont's Internet Director Speaks Out On Getting Cleared Of Lieberman Hack Attack

By Greg Sargent - April 9, 2008, 12:24PM
As you may have heard by now, a Federal probe has concluded that Ned Lamont's campaign did not bring down Joe Lieberman's campaign Web site with a hack attack, as the Lieberman camp charged on Election Day 2006.
What really happened was that the Lieberman camp's server failed.
This is vindication for Lamont's Internet director, Tim Tagaris (his picture is here). So I checked in with Tagaris, who as you might expect had a few things to say about this.
"The sad thing is, Lieberman himself repeated the charge all day in an attempt to discredit his opponents and drive down Ned's primary vote," Tagaris instant messages to me. "It was broadcast on every cable news channel, and papers from The New York Times to the Hartford Courant wrote about it."
"And he got away with it -- who cares what's reported today," Tagaris continues. "He won the election based on a pattern of lies loudly repeated and dutifully stenographed."
"Now maybe someone will run an investigation into Joe Lieberman's repeated claim that no one wants to end the war more than he does," Tagaris concludes.
It'll be interesting to see if all the cable and print outlets that went nuts over the Lieberman campaign's accusations that day will take note of the fact that the Lamont campaign -- and Tagaris -- have now been cleared.
Late Update: Lieberman spokesperson Dan Gerstein, who also echoed the Election Day attack on the Lamont campaign, sends over this response:

“After the Lieberman campaign website went down the day before the 2006 Democratic primary, we were told by our website administrator that there was clear evidence of an outside effort to disrupt our site, and that the administrator was so certain that the site had been attacked that he was willing to swear to it in a legal affidavit. Based on his assessment, and the fact that there had been at least one prior attack on the campaign’s website, the campaign asked the Justice Department to investigate the incident to find out what happened and determine if a crime had been committed. The Justice Department has shared the results of their investigation with us, the Senator appreciates their diligence and accepts their findings, and we consider the matter closed.”

source


Mr. G