Joe Lieberman’s campaign website is offline at the moment, “suspended” by its host. Lieberman claims his site was hacked; that seems like inartful phrasing, as I don’t think a denial-of-service attack technically counts as being “hacked,” and a DoS attack is most likely what’s going on. But while Lieberman’s explanation may be inartful, the lying bastards at Daily Kos are having a field day, claiming without substantiation that Lieberman simply didn’t pay his bills and is now blaming Lamont supporters for it. An e-mailer wrote, and Kos posted:
They are claiming we hacked their website. Unfortunately for them, an astute observer caught the screen shot asking them to contact the billing department. They just didn’t pay their bills.
Except, that’s NOT what the screenshot says. It says “contact the billing/support department,” not “contact the billing department.” The slash means “billing or support.” The message is nonspecific — it is the same boilerplate template used for all account suspensions, regardless of whether they’re billing-related or support-related (i.e., technical issues). But Kos is convinced:
“Suspended”. Accounts are generally suspended for one of two reasons: 1) inappropriate or illegal content (which we can obviously rule out in this case), or 2) from lack of payment.
That is simply not true. Those are NOT the only reasons an account is “generally suspended.” Back when I was on Total Choice Hosting, I got the exact same message — “Please contact the billing/support department” — when my website was shut down on several occasions due to bandwidth overages or excessive CPU usage caused by comment-spam, either of which could very easily occur if someone has set up a bot to take down Joe’s site. And I remember a few people making the same unwarranted assumption that Kos is making, that I must not have paid my bills because the word “billing” was mentioned in the error message. What people seem not to notice is the “support” part of “billing/support.” Anyway, it’s really rather irresponsible for someone as influential as Kos to be throwing around completely unsubstantiated accusations that the Lieberman campaign simply didn’t pay its bills and is now lying to the public. Kos’s claims are supported by nothing more than a misquote and a factually incorrect assumption. Lame.
P.S. While I was writing this post, Kos added an update to his site:
The Lieberman campaign has produced an email from their host claiming the outages came from a DoS attack.
It doesn’t pass the smell test — DoS attacks wouldn’t bring down a site for 18 hours (or however long their site has been down). So it could be their hosting provider is either covering for the Lieberman campaign, or perhaps more likely, it is simply incompetent.
Ah yes, it’s a conspiracy! The site’s commercial host is “covering for the Lieberman campaign”! Everything is a conspiracy and a cover-up in Kos World! But the notion that the Lieberman explanation “doesn’t pass the smell test” is pure bunkum; my site has gone down for very long periods of time due to DoS-type activity. I’m sure Lieberman’s people were working feverishly with their host’s support personnel, trying to get the site back up, but the problem is, they’re apparently on a shared server, so if their site is getting attacked, the host isn’t going to jeopardize every other account on the server by putting it back up right away. I’ve been through this several times; trust me. It sucks. It’s extremely frustrating. But it’s not at all difficult to believe.
It is puzzling that Lieberman apparently didn’t shell out the cash for a dedicated server. Maybe he thought he didn’t need it. And indeed, he probably wouldn’t have, but for the DoS attack. Kos’s statement that “the DoS ‘attack’ may have merely been strong pre-election traffic” doesn’t pass my smell test; no way was Lieberman’s official website getting enough traffic to force it offline. I don’t buy it for a second. Kos compares it to his own site, noting “how Daily Kos can grind and even crash on high-traffic days,” but c’mon — Joe2006.com isn’t DailyKos.com. Kos gets 500,000+ hits a day! I’m very, very skeptical that Lieberman was getting enough “natural” traffic to cause a server meltdown. However, a few well-positioned LamontBots (deployed by rogue supporters, not the campaign itself, no doubt) could easily do the trick.
Anyway, I need to get back to work. There are hours to bill! I just wanted to update y’all on this rather interesting development…
P.P.S. Texasyank thinks this is a sign of things to come.
UPDATE: Apparently there were two separate attacks. That makes the “didn’t pay their bills” lie even less plausible.
Also: it isn’t just the website. Lieberman’s staffers can’t get their e-mail because the entire joe2006.com domain is down. I hadn’t thought of that, but of course that would be true; I always lose the ability to get my brendanloy.com e-mail when there’s a server problem. That seems like a really big deal — the inability to e-mail each other on election day.
Anyway, here is Lamont’s official statement:
If Senator Lieberman’s website was indeed hacked, we had absolutely no part in it, denounce the action, and urge whoever is responsible cease and desist immediately. It is our sincerest wish that everyone planning to vote for Ned Lamont or Joe Lieberman does so today.
Can’t argue with that. Now if only Kos had the same degree of integrity, and would apologize for his totally unsubstantiated and unjustifiable smear against the Lieberman campaign, claiming that their whole DoS story is a lie and that really they just didn’t pay their bills. For shame, Kos.
UPDATE 2: Credit where credit is due: this post and this post by Kos sound much reasonable than earlier posts, and apparently the Lamont campaign has offered technical assistance to the Lieberman campaign, which is truly admirable.
That said, it’s rather galling to read Kos’s statement, “One side is acting mature, the other is running around making baseless accusations,” when Kos himself was, until an hour or so ago, baselessly accusing Lieberman’s side of having failed to pay their bill.
Anyway, contra Kos, I suspect that Lieberman has indeed been the victim of some sort of abusive practice that resulted in a bandwidth overage and/or the crashing of his server. I seriously doubt it was simply a massive election-eve and election-day traffic spike; that doesn’t make sense, especially since the troubles started last night (not during the work day, when web traffic is always highest).
However, I agree with Kos (someone write down the day and time!) that, if Lieberman’s campaign thought they could get by paying $15/month for site hosting, they were freakin’ dumb. I pay ten times that much for this site (well, with the help of my fellow “dedheads”; see blogroll at right), and I’m just a middling blogger, not a U.S. Senator running for re-election. Although I doubt anything would have gone wrong if not for malicious pranksters, the Internet is like the Wild West — you should always expect malicious pranksters. You want a setup that’s resilient to their actions, and even more important, you want a support team that is ready, willing and able to fix problems very quickly when they do arise. Relying on a low-end commercial shared server for somethting as important as your campaign website when you’re running for U.S. Senate is ludicrous.
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Categories: Joe Lieberman, Election 2006
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August 8th, 2006 at 10:54:38 am
Jeez. Some 15-year-old in Stamford could be behind this. Kos shouldn’t be accusing Lieberman of not paying his bills and the Lieberman people shouldn’t be accusing Lamont of being behind it. Both are talking out of their asses.
August 8th, 2006 at 11:00:59 am
Agreed, sorta. The thing is, Lieberman isn’t saying that Lamont is “behind it.”
Demanding that Lamont publicly tell his supporters to stop is a far cry from asserting that he’s “behind it.”
However, I am skeptical whether Lieberman even knows that it’s a Lamont supporter, as opposed to some random prankster. And if they don’t know, they shouldn’t pretend they know — even if it is a reasonable guess with perhaps a 95% probability of being true. (Who else would want to shut down Lieberman’s site on Election Day but a Lamont supporter? And what harm could it to do for Lamont to publicly say, “If one of my supporters is doing this, I urge them to stop”?)
August 8th, 2006 at 11:17:55 am
By your posting it looks like Lamont did what you suggested.
August 8th, 2006 at 11:24:54 am
Yes, he now has.
August 8th, 2006 at 11:52:13 am
Hack attack
Joe Lieberman cries foul. John at Verum Serum smells a rat. So does Brendan Loy. Howard Mortman is tracking “Joebituaries.” Real Clear Politics has all the latest….
August 8th, 2006 at 11:59:28 am
Here’s an example of how they handle political differences in Florida. The guy sitting down is a liberal candidate for a county position. The guy yelling off camera is the conservative host for a community access television show. Just watch…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2U19EEb67o
August 8th, 2006 at 12:10:44 pm
The Lamont supporters and Kos dopes are having a hard time with this one because they just usually call it a plot by Karl Rove and are done with it.
August 8th, 2006 at 12:14:04 pm
Kos seems to fail to notice that the Lieberman Campaign has requested a criminal investigation into this matter by Federal and State officials.
If they knew it was failure to pay their bill, yet requested this investigation, then they would be on the hook for “Filing a False Report” which is no laughing matter.
August 8th, 2006 at 12:46:12 pm
Actually, Karl Rove’s M.O. would be to attack his own candidate’s site and blame it on the other campaign. Kind of the way listening devices were found in his office during one campaign, and it turned out later that HE was the one who put them in the office.
August 8th, 2006 at 12:49:01 pm
Yea, it is probably a DoS attack, but to be honest, their webhoster must suck. DoS attacks can be prevented or at least redirected away based on certain patterns. Many of the higher price server companies offer DoS protection.
Wonder if it is something worse, like a bug in the system that is rewriting files every second from inside the box.
August 8th, 2006 at 12:52:36 pm
[…] di •Posted by Mike @ 3:49 pm Tuesday, 8 August 2006• Well, of course it’s a DOS attack, and of cour […]
August 8th, 2006 at 1:03:49 pm
this seems like most likely some random lunatic lieberman hater who thought it would be cool to take the site down. still lieberman not paying the bills would be a much funnier and better story, and i can’t really blame the people at Kos for jumping to that conclusion after the screenshot they captured, and after that screenshow was pulled.
August 8th, 2006 at 1:05:19 pm
Lamont’s campaign has offered to send over their tech gurus to get the site back up and running. So far, no response from the Lieberman people.
link: http://nedlamont.com/blog
Also, new theories emerging about the hosting provider, MyHostCamp (10GB bandwidth limit). All of MyHostCamp’s sites are down. That’s from Kos, here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/8/153827/3493
August 8th, 2006 at 1:11:12 pm
I agree with PenguinSix that “their webhoster must suck.” This reminds me of what I had to deal with at Total Choice Hosting, except worse. I wouldn’t characterize TCH as “sucking,” but I certainly wouldn’t run a campaign website on a TCH shared server. A TCH dedicated server, maybe, because their tech support was generally pretty good. (Though WestHost’s is better.) With this company, it seems like both their product and their support kinda sucks. Considering how little it costs compared to other aspects of running a campaign, it’s really mind-boggling that Lieberman cheaped out on the web hosting. [Insert offensive Jewish stereotype joke here. C’mon, you know you were thinking it too. Now that it’s been voiced out loud, we can move on. Hehe.]
The fact that “all of MyHostCamp’s sites are down” suggests that it is a DoS attack of some kind, and certainly it very strongly suggests that it wasn’t a mere bandwidth overage that caused this, no? If Lieberman’s account was simply suspended because he went over his monthly bandwidth allotment, that wouldn’t crash the whole damn server farm!
August 8th, 2006 at 1:11:31 pm
Kos’s original reasoning flies in the face of what happened to Goldstein during the Frisch BS. Hell, I got eight machines here in my home office and can take just about any site out if that’s what is on my mind. And the screencap that was on Lamont’s own website looked like it was doctored.
For him to think one of his loonybin “diarists” is incapable of this, considering the emotion they have put into winning this Conn. race, is just retarded to a nose-bleeding degree.
August 8th, 2006 at 1:12:33 pm
Oh, forgot to mention. The Lamont blog is linking to a google cache of the lieberman website. Good on Ned n company for that!
August 8th, 2006 at 1:22:36 pm
Hmmmmmmmmmm…KOS providing cover for a political dirty trick that benefits the candidate that’s paying him…say it ain’t so! I hope they (the KOSsacks)don’t savage you for pointing out the facts. It’s been known to happen.
August 8th, 2006 at 1:24:23 pm
You’re way out of your depth here man, and you should stop digging the hole you already started for yourself. For example, this quote:
(( especially since the troubles started last night (not during the work day, when web traffic is always highest). ))
Most hosting packages allow for a specfic ceiling on bandwidth over a given period of time - that means it’s a cumulative effect, and the ‘tipping point’ that could send you over your limit could happen even at 3:00am Eastern with one single person sending the traffic over the limit.
Also, Kos’s comments were correct - anyone that saw that screen and has worked professionally in Internet businesses have seen multiple variants and know exactly what it means.
FAILING TO ANTICIPATE a surge in traffic is, in effect, a failure to pay your bills. That’s how it works on the web. You have to pay *before* the hits start coming, to make sure you can handle it.
That’s why people beef up their bandwidth options when they host events or multimedia.
You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about and you are letting your anti-Kos pro-Lieberman bias cloud what is a fairly straightforward issue. Lieberman’s camp didn’t have the infrastructure to handle any serious amount of traffic.
And, oh, by the way - you evidently missed the fact that this exact same thing happened to Joe’s site back when he debuted his precious video with the cartoon bear. That should’ve shown them that they needed to beef up to be able to handle real traffic.
If you want to maintain any credibility you should notice your complete failure here and issue total retractions.
School is over now.
August 8th, 2006 at 1:24:40 pm
Term limits - 18 years is enough. If he loses, no big deal, throw all the bastards out, either by election (the Democratic way), or by indictment (the other way).
August 8th, 2006 at 1:30:23 pm
the screencap that was on Lamont’s own website looked like it was doctored
It wasn’t. Trust me; I’ve seen that EXACT SAME SCREEN before. Total Choice Hosting and MyHostCamp must use the same software or something.
Kos’s comments were correct - anyone that saw that screen and has worked professionally in Internet businesses have seen multiple variants and know exactly what it means.
Except that, as I already stated, I have firsthand, personal experience which PROVES that that exact same screen can also appear when your account is “suspended” due to DoS-type activity… overwhelming bandwidth surges, comment-spam attacks that freeze up the server, etc. The host will “suspend” your account temporarily in order to save other clients on the server from being bogged down by your baggage. In that situation, you need to contact the “support” department rather than the “billing” department.
Most hosting packages allow for a specfic ceiling on bandwidth over a given period of time - that means it’s a cumulative effect, and the ‘tipping point’ that could send you over your limit could happen even at 3:00am Eastern with one single person sending the traffic over the limit.
But what happened here clearly isn’t a mere bandwidth overage; if it were, the entire MyHostCamp site wouldn’t be offline. (Duh.) What happened here fits all the patterns that would accompany an intense burst of bandwidth or CPU activity, as opposed to slowly hitting a ceiling. And there’s no way an intense burst of activity would happen at 3:00 AM unless it was malicious.
I’m not out of my depth, you’re just making faulty assumptions.
August 8th, 2006 at 1:35:08 pm
Lieberman’s camp didn’t have the infrastructure to handle any serious amount of traffic.
That is absolutely true, and I already acknowledged it, both in my post and in comments. In spite of my “anti-Kos pro-Lieberman bias,” I said: “if Lieberman’s campaign thought they could get by paying $15/month for site hosting, they were freakin’ dumb” and “Although I doubt anything would have gone wrong if not for malicious pranksters, the Internet is like the Wild West â€â€? you should always expect malicious pranksters.”
So it’s not like I’m failing to acknowledge that Lieberman’s people screwed up. However, while reaching a bandwidth ceiling could, be said to be, “in effect, a failure to pay your bills,” failing to anticipate a DoS-style burst of malicious activity is certainly NOT “in effect, a failure to pay your bills.” It may be stupid — i.e., they should have anticipated it — but it’s quite a different thing than failing to pay the bills. Therefore, Kos should be the one issuing retractions, not me.
August 8th, 2006 at 1:35:19 pm
Any webhosting company–any webhosting company–in a situation like this with national attention focused on their product would lift the bandwidth caps in a milisecond IF it was just a simple “over the limit issue”. While Kos is right in saying the Joe campain is nuts to use a $15 web package for their site, just because the hosters HAVE a $15 package doesn’t mean they don’t have dedicated servers and other options.
In a high traffic situation, to flip a server on takes less than 20 minutes. My migrations between servers are done in less than 3 minutes of downtime with 15 minutes of prep. Reset the Nameservers and bam, back up.
Something else is going on…the log files will prove this in the days to come.
August 8th, 2006 at 1:43:00 pm
As an owner/operator of a small web hosting business who has had to suspend services of multiple accounts over the course of operations you’re take on it is the more reasonable, Brendon. The actual template users are receiving are stock CPanel server messages which don’t tell a viewer exactly why the service is down…only that it is. CPanel is an integrated hosting solution normally used on Linux platforms which makes many parts of hosting a bit easier for admins including the ability to simply turn a site off and have a stock template show. DDOS attacks can be very simple floods from an unsecured server to the D(distributed) in DD attacks which can me monsters to battle….I’m not sure why the explanation is/was questioned but turning the account off so it doesn’t effect others on the same server or even network is oftentimes the prudent way to go. KOS just seems, are did seem since he apparently learned some critical thinking skills recently, to be so beholden to conspiratorial politics that even the obvious has become obscure.
August 8th, 2006 at 2:11:46 pm
Just suspend your political loyalties for one second and try to guess which is the more likely explanation?
A) that persons who have given blood, sweat, tears, and skills, to the race, on Lamont’s behalf, because they are committed to the democratic process, would decide to use those energies, instead of getting out the vote in the last minute of the effort, to hatch a denial of service attack, and despite their ability to know how to do this, they were unaware of the obvious political backfire and ammunition it would create for their enemy camp
B) a $15/month hosting package at a crappy provider buckled under intense traffic
August 8th, 2006 at 2:23:38 pm
Given the subject and tone of your post, you might want to consider leaving the Democrats sooner regardless of the outcome of the election.
August 8th, 2006 at 2:32:43 pm
Milton, I am not contending that that “persons who have given blood, sweat, tears, and skills, to the race, on Lamont’s behalf” decided “to hatch a denial of service attack.” I am contending that some idiot Lamont supporter — a “rogue,” I believe was term I used — did this. Not a true-blue Lamontite, not a campaign chairman or even probably a campaign volunteer. Just some pissed-off idiot. (You think your side doesn’t have irrational idiots too? They exist on the Left, the Right, and the Center. They’re everywhere.) So what you’re presenting here is a false dichotomy.
Regardless, having been through this sort of thing many times myself, it isn’t as simple as “a crappy provider buckled under intense traffic.” In order for that to be the explanation, given that it has taken down the entire host is down, it would need to have been REALLY intense traffic — like, his-site-suddenly-got-linked-at-the-top-of-Drudge’s-homepage intense, not just oh-look-it’s-election-day intense. That’s not plausible IMHO.
I’ve not wearing blinders on this. I’ve acknowledged that Lamont has acted honorably and I’ve acknowledged that Lieberman’s people screwed up. The fact remains, however, that my honest assessment of the facts is: it’s far more likely than not that there was some sort of abusive, malicious activity going on here… whether it technically qualifies as a “DoS” or not… somebody was deliberately interfering with Lieberman’s site. That doesn’t reflect poorly on Lamont or his supporters as a whole, it only reflects poorly on the assholes who were involved.
August 8th, 2006 at 2:34:09 pm
I’m not impressed by the Lieberman folks — even in the worst case, it shouldn’t take more than a few hours to move a web site to a new provider. And a $15 account isn’t going to have a very high bandwidth limit. I’d be willing to bet, because this is a high profile race, that the Joe2006 site exceeded whatever paltry bandwidth allotment it had yesterday.
DoS/SQL injection attacks are annoying, but aren’t usually too serious. Not being prepared for them is kind of like going camping without bug spray — turns a minor annoyance into a real problem.
IMO, something smells about this — could be a pretext for an independent run by Lieberman. The one thing I don’t see any evidence for is a concerted attack by the Lamont campaign, but hell, that’s what Web server logs are for….
August 8th, 2006 at 2:47:52 pm
There is no reason to believe the site was hacked at all, and certainly no proof.
August 8th, 2006 at 2:51:47 pm
I wonder way so many neocon pundits endorse Joe if he true Democrat. Joe is not moderate because he does business with the extreme right and parrots there talking points on Fox, he simply becomes part of the right wing machine.
August 8th, 2006 at 2:56:20 pm
Come on, man. Get real.
As you note yourself:
(( This unusual situation, linking from the permalink page to the pop-up comments page, is necessitated by heavy traffic caused by near-simultaneous links from InstaPundit and Michelle Malkin which — ironically enough — nearly crashed my site. Or at least, slowed it waaaay down.) ))
And yet you still jump to the most nefarious conclusion with what happened to Lieberman’s site.
Yes, of course it’s possible that this was a DoS attack.
Far more likely, it was just lack of planning, lack of ability to adapt to the intense upsurge in traffic. And, I will reiterate -THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE, LIEBERMAN FAILED TO HAVE ENOUGH BANDWIDTH TO HOST A CARTOON - To call the Kos crowd “liars” for opting with this more likely explanation, shows that you’re indeed victimized by blinders. You’re not seeing this clearly.
August 8th, 2006 at 3:01:28 pm
Oh and one more thing,
MyDD.com has been down today.
DailyKos has been hard to get to render several times.
FireDogLake.com has been down today.
So, let’s see… including YOUR site… that means there are FIVE SITES that have struggled under the quantum leap in traffic and interest in this story.
But oh no oh no, it’s those Evil Internets People out there who hacked poor Joe’s site. He should get a do-over, shouldn’t he.
August 8th, 2006 at 3:05:41 pm
Saying “Kos and the Kossacks lie” is like saying “the color of the sky on a clear, sunny day is blue.”
August 8th, 2006 at 3:10:11 pm
[…] plan for something as important as a Senate campaign? Stupid. Ludicrous, actually. (link) thoughtcr1me (for due to the uncontrollable power of […]
August 8th, 2006 at 3:13:17 pm
Lieberman’s first act after re-elected by a 10-point margin this fall will be to re-declare as a Democrat to tip the Senate majority to the Party’s favor.
The Senator has a long memory, and now he will have the full power of the Senate machinery. He has already called for an investigation of this DoS attack. Indictments will flow like champagne. Probably won’t be the best time to have been a past Lamont supporter.
August 8th, 2006 at 3:21:54 pm
Milton, there is a very big difference between a site slowing down or even briefly crashing due to high bandwidth, and an entire hosting company having all of its sites knocked offline for hours and hours. The latter strongly suggests something much more severe than a normal traffic boost. Especially considering that all this started, as I said, during the night-time hours, when traffic would not have been high. Since this clearly isn’t just about a simple bandwidth overage, as you suggested (if it were, only Lieberman’s site would be affected), it doesn’t make sense that it started at night… unless it was an attack of some kind.
Regardless, Kos certainly did lie when he said repeatedly that Lieberman’s people had simply failed to pay their bills. He consciously misrepresented what the error message said (it said “billing/support,” Kos said “billing”) and made it sound like he was completely certain that this was a billing issue. We now know that’s not the case. Either the server was brought down maliciously or it was brought down by run-of-the-mill high traffic, but either way, it was brought down, “suspended” because of its bandwidth/CPU issues… not because of a failure to pay the bills. Kos’s earlier “analysis” can’t be justified by any reasonable interpretation of the facts.
The bigger issue here is how the media has misrepresented what Lieberman’s campaign said. I have not seen anywhere a single quote where anyone from the Lieberman accused Ned Lamont or his campaign of direct involvement in this. All they said was that some supporters of Lamont were the likely culprits, and the media distorted and exaggerated that into Lieberman directly accusing Lamont. That simply never happened (correct me if I’m wrong, but I want a direct quote, in context).
August 8th, 2006 at 3:23:23 pm
Munge, no “re-declaring” is necessary. Lieberman personally will remain a registered Democrat, notwithstanding his “Connecticut for Lieberman” petitioning-candidate party label. Once he gets into the Senate, whether he is effectively a Democrat or effectively not a Democrat depends on which caucus he “organizes” with, and he doesn’t need to “declare” as a Democrat to do that. For instance, Jim Jeffords is a declared independent, but organizes with the Dems.
August 8th, 2006 at 3:54:05 pm
I don’t really get into the left vs right feuds because I think they are all childish, silly, and bad for the country.
However, this isn’t a DOS attack. If it was, the other sites on the server would be down right now, which they aren’t. Not to mention that no competent host in the world would be down this long from an attack.
He was hosted on a very low end hosting package and this stuff happens when you have a big day. Ask any small time website what happens when they get a story on Digg or Slashdot. That is the same message that is placed when they exceed the bandwidth limit and thus hurt the other websites on the server.
It’s a message to politicians that if you value your site and need it to be up, you must pay for real hosting. There are plenty of hosts who have “mission critical” hosting plans that will have them making sure your site doesn’t go down regardless of the circumstances.
Either the Lieberman camp is totally inept technology-wise, or looking to play the martyr here. My guess is a little of both.
August 8th, 2006 at 4:20:40 pm
I think Lieberman should threaten not to renew his GeoCities account!
August 8th, 2006 at 4:25:31 pm
But Sean, Lieberman’s site wasn’t Slashdotted, Farked, Drudged or Instalanched. It wasn’t anythinged. This happened last night, without any major links or any reason for the traffic to have suddenly spiked — except a malicious action of some sort.
Now, today, the traffic has obviously spiked, AFTER the initial problem, because of all the media attention. But that doesn’t explain how this got started with the original shutdowns last night and this morning.
August 8th, 2006 at 4:31:39 pm
It’s quite possible that Lieberman’s website has suffered a DOS or DDOS attack.
What isn’t probably is that the site would still be down from such an attack. I doubt Lieberman booked a $15.00 a month hosting service for his website. But he seems to have web consultants worth about $15.00 an hour if his site is still down now due to an attack.
Perhaps he decided to milk this attack for all it’s worth.
For the record, I’ll happily take over Lieberman’s webserver for him should he choose to run as an independant. But it won’t be an in kind contribution on my part.
August 8th, 2006 at 4:55:24 pm
I agree with Davebo. Any web service company that is worth a shit would have had this fixed a long time ago. I think he probably is milking it. I hope it turns out to be something embarrassingly mundane, like the server is down for maintenance and the campaign was notified a long time ago. Heh.
August 8th, 2006 at 5:08:33 pm
Regarding Lieberman’s site, this is what happens when you treat the Internet like a truck and not a series of tubes.
August 8th, 2006 at 9:48:11 pm
Brendan, there are so many variables that can knock out a site on shared hosting. In my experience, a massive DOS attack will not only hurt the site in question, but all the sites on the server. Earlier when this was reported, the other sites on the server were functioning just fine.
I understand what you are saying about it not being linked anywhere, but this has been the biggest political news story of the week and has been covered front and center coming up to this day. I would imagine that this past week would be the highest spike in traffic his site would see. Regardless, I think claims by some that he didn’t pay his bill are ridiculous and baseless.
Nonetheless, regardless of reason, you can’t blame others for this “attack”. Major websites throughout the world get DOS attacks daily and manage to fight it off. If your website is that important to you, you should be hosting with a mission critical package with a top notch host. I’ve dealt with these attacks before and a competent host will be able to handle this properly and keep the site functioning.
As for who he is hosting with now, they look to me like a low level hosting company. They are literally unheard of in the hosting space and have zero reputation to go by. The fact that 70+ other sites are hosted on the same server means it was a shared hosting account which is a very cheap route for a very important site. With all the TV ads he’s throwing out, I couldn’t fathom not dishing out a few hundred bucks for top tier hosting from a respected and reliable provider.
The moral to the story is you get what you pay for. If it was a malicious attack by some crazy nut, it’s a tough break for him. This stuff happens and will continue to happen throughout the history of the internet. Not protecting one of your most important assets on the eve of your biggest political fight is just incompetence.
I don’t mean to come across harsh toward Lieberman. I don’t dislike the guy and actually prefer him to win as an independent (simply because I don’t like either party much these days and would like some politicians with a mind of their own). But I don’t like excuses, especially excuses on something that should have never happened if the right people had handled the situation. Why was there no backup host? Why was there no contigency plan in place for an attack?
Anyways, I guarantee that there will be a ton of politicians calling up their web guys tomorrow morning and asking a lot of questions.
August 8th, 2006 at 9:54:57 pm
Sean, I completely agree with everything you just said. :)
August 9th, 2006 at 9:58:07 am
Ned Lamont - Happy Days are Here Again
So…. Do you support Lamont? Do you feel that Lieberman got what was “coming to him?” How does a U.S. Senator go from being the Vice Presidential candidate on the party that one the popular vote to losling a…
August 9th, 2006 at 11:21:37 am
Joe Lieberman’s site hacked.
Joe Lieberman said his fundraising website was brought down by a denial of service attack.
August 10th, 2006 at 7:27:22 am
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001311.php#more
The site uses a software package called Joomla to manage its content, according to both men. Hubbell insists his company kept the servers up-to-date with all security upgrades and patches. Right now, he theorizes that an as-yet-unreported flaw in Joomla was exploited by a hacker to bring the site down.
“It was potentially various components and modules, we haven’t figured out which one,” Hubbell said. “That’s kind of the guess. . . . The security patches were so fresh that. . . there might have been an additional undocumented loophole that someone got through.”
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.”
So in otherwords, the site was hacking itself.
August 12th, 2006 at 4:18:14 am
I’ve read that they use extCallendar extension, which is known to be source of security weekness.
August 16th, 2006 at 11:29:33 am
Do yourself a favor and never work in systems security… you’ve no clue what you’re talking about.
November 14th, 2006 at 1:55:44 pm
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