This is a reading of a comment left on my blog post about Norm Coleman’s Website Database Leak.
[youtube width="650" height="520"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdvlBbLII6w[/youtube]
Update 1: Enelson has posted an article expanding on this comment:
Norm Coleman and Identity Theft Gate: Is Your Online Donation to Norm Coleman Safe?
Update 2: Edited a bit of grammar at request of poster (homonyms, commas, spelling, semicolon, spacing, referring to Adria as a generalized type of person vs an individual
March 12th, 2009
Okay, I couldn’t take it anymore after reading all the ignorant comments attacking Adria. I am a fellow IT consultant and I deal with security issues every day. I see hackers scanning my clients sites EVERY day looking for potential openings and exploits. These hackers are using untraceable zombie networks from all over the world. Chinese hackers; Romanian hackers; and yes many pre-teen US hackers.
Just because Bob and the rest of the computer illiterate posters here have no clue about technology, it does not mean that anyone else should remain as clueless as they are. The fact of the matter is, as an IT consultant responsible for my client’s web technology and any sensitive information associated with their websites, I ABSOLUTELY want “an Adria” to point this out as quickly as possible so that I can act on it rather than have multiple GIGANTIC security holes remain exposed for weeks, with hundreds of untraceable IP connections downloading the information. All of these security breaches can be easily found AUTOMATICALLY with internet scanners very similar to what Google uses to index the entire internet. I hate to break this to you, Bob, but I can almost guarantee you that there are Chinese and Eastern European hackers that have had this information well before Adria found it. And if you think they are going to call up Norm and let him know, I have some oceanfront property in Iowa to sell you.
The fact of the matter is that Norm Coleman and the people working for him are either completely incompetent or blatantly negligent. Adria was not the first person to alert the Norm Coleman campaign to the potential problems and yet they continued to ignore their duties to A) FIX THE PROBLEM B) Alert the donors of their mistake and C) TAKE THE DAMN SITE DOWN. It takes 2 minutes to do this until you can figure out what the problem is. Instead, the Coleman campaign claimed their site was hacked for political purposes, claimed they contacted the Secret Service to investigate and who then unbelievably and incorrectly said that no sensitive information had leaked out.
So the question should be, Bob, as a donor, would you not want Norm or someone else to alert you to the fact that your credit card information has most assuredly fallen into the hands of international hackers?
Enelson, thank for taking the time to write such a detailed comment from your perspective on this. I was so moved that I wanted to give a voice to your words.
