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Saddam's Inbox Hacked

MotorMachineMercenar writes "Wired News is reporting that Saddam Hussein's email account (press@uruklink.net) has been hacked into. The account had a five-letter login with the same password. Messages in his inbox sent from all over the world included everything from death threats to business propositions to offers to sell him WMDs. A choice quote from the article: 'One AOL user sent Saddam a one-word message: 'Imminent.' Attached to the Aug. 6 e-mail was a photograph of an atomic mushroom cloud.' I wonder what the login was." You'd think it was "press," password "press," but if it were that obvious I think someone would have said so.

11 of 595 comments (clear)

  1. Password? in english? by Jonny+Balls · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't you think his password wouldn't be in ENGLISH?

    --
    --JonnyBlog
  2. Re:Hoax? by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, like the article says, the address is the Iraqi equivalent of "president@whitehouse.gov". (As opposed to "president@whitehouse.com", which is something quite different. ;) So what it means, no doubt, is that a bunch of low-level employees do a first pass through it, filter out all the spam and death threats, then pass it onto their slightly less low-level superiors, who filter out most of the rest of it and write up summaries, then pass it on ... [repeat n times] ... until Saddam gets a one-page summary on his desk and maybe a couple of really interesting letters, like the one from an American to which he (supposedly) wrote a personal reply.

    Iraq's government is very, very different from ours in a lot of ways (duh) but it's still a government, and thus a bureaucracy, and all bureaucracies have certain aspects in common. The people who read the e-mail addressed to "press@uruklink.net" and those who read the e-mail addressed to "president@whitehouse.gov" would probably be able to fit quite nicely into each other's jobs.

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  3. Re:Scary by Iamthefallen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Contrary to popular american beliefs, Europe is NOT pro-Iraq, we're just not as keen on resorting to force nowadays since we saw the result of it at home.
    The US hasn't in modern times seen widespread destruction on home turf, we still remember it vividly.

    If the US could prove to European leaders (and European population) that Iraq is indeed the threat the US makes it out to be, then I'm sure European nations would also support military action and possibly be a part of it, as most have stated, they want a UN mandate first. But, the "He dun tried to kill mah paw" argument isn't that convincing on the European side of the pond.

    --
    Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
  4. Re:Scary by pubjames · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Contrary to popular american beliefs, Europe is NOT pro-Iraq, we're just not as keen on resorting to force nowadays since we saw the result of it at home.

    Hey guys, just to make the argument clearer could you please make a distinction between Saddam and his cronies and the people/country of Iraq. I'm sure many Europeans (and hopefully Americans) would consider themselves pro-Iraq if we are talking about the country and people, but anti-Iraq if we are talking about Saddam and his cronies.

  5. Re:Hoax? by Genjurosan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For some reason, I just don't see Saddam reading e-mail. What exactly would he expect? An outlook invite to the lunch and learn session on advanced tourture methods in the atomic conference room? Or perhaps he gives out his card at political functions so that people can e-mail him new ideas about how to fund terrorist operations without the world knowing about it.

    --
    Saddam Hussein
    President, god, and super nice guy (because I said so).
    Iraq, country of milk and honey
    (964)(1) 718-9267 (phone)
    (964)(1) 885-2286 (fax)

    "This issue is not inspectors, the issue is disarmament."

    - GWB

  6. Re:Scary by TheCaptain · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Contrary to popular american beliefs, Europe is NOT pro-Iraq, we're just not as keen on resorting to force nowadays since we saw the result of it at home.


    I would have hoped you also saw the result of NOT using force when it should have been...like keeping Hitler from rearming after WWI.

    I am not trying to be a troll or leave the wrong impression, but Saddam and his crew are not the types you want to have that kinda stuff. The U.N. knows it and made resolutions to prevent it...unfortunately, none of them are being enforced.

    There were agreements made to stop the last war...like weapons inspectors that wouldn't be interferred with etc. Saddam isn't abiding by his side of the deal, so the other side isn't bound to the ceasefire either. This has very little to do with GWB wanting to kill him because of his father...and that is a really really lame accusation, IMHO.

  7. So who exactly did the hacking? by Dan+Crash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Did Brian McWilliams, author of the article, do the actual hacking? Or was he just informed of it by some skript kiddie? The article is mysteriously vague about who did the deed.

    Assuming they did do the hacking, this is ethical... how? Does this mean they figure it's all right to hack into anyone's e-mail and publicize the results? What if it were your e-mail?

    It may have been a nifty trick that someone happened to guess the right password, but as journalism, this is beyond the pale. I'd like to see someone from WIRED News comment a little more specifically on who the hacker was, why his or her name wasn't disclosed, and how WIRED justifies reporting on the hacked contents of an e-mail account, and where they draw the lines.

    --
    He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
  8. Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us! by iocat · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's offtopic, but I had to respond:

    An objective analysis of both W's record and Saddam's record reaveals that Saddam has a much worse record on human rights. It's funny and popular to say otherwise on Campus, maybe, but last time I checked, the US government doesn't maintain a specially horrific prision for the children of dissidents, doesn't gas its own citizens, doesn't execute military officers by the hundreds, doesn't explicitly repress free speech, etc. Which the Iraqi government, controlled by Hussein, does.

    Regardless of whether or not attacking Iraq is a good idea, saying what you said kind of makes you seem like a moron, because it's absolutely factually incorrect, and it lessens the impact of any argument you try to make.

    The worst Republican, on his worst, conspiracy-laden, evil, money-grubbing day is better than Saddam Hussein on his best, most charitable, not-killing-people day.

    --

    Dude, I think I can see my house from here.

  9. Re:Pearl Harbor ring a bell? by Samrobb · · Score: 5, Insightful
    America hasn't got enough 'history' and so can't understand these things.

    No - we have more than enough history... your history, as a matter of fact. We understand these things very well, thank you, which is why we go to great lengths to keep our homeland from experiencing the sort of things that have happened elsewhere in the world.

    So - what next? Are you going to claim that only someone who dies from lung cancer is smart enough to know that smoking is dangerous?

    --
    "Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
  10. Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us! by etymxris · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I really don't think it's fair to compare the Iraq of today with the US of 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago. As for the more recent "atrocities" you mention:

    • We don't know what caused Gulf War Syndrome, or if the US government is responsible. The only evidence of a coverup is the evidence that the symptoms are so vague that no one even thought to look at it as a separate illness until sometime after the war.
    • Doing bad things with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons before we knew the dire consequences of using them is one thing. But it is another thing to use such weapons on civilians when you know exactly what the effects will be.
    • That the US government was giving Hep B vaccines to Inuit children in a covert attempt to increase incidence of AIDS among that racial group during the 1990's is just ludicrous. It may very well be that there are bad side effects to the Hep B vaccine, and it may be that the US government was negligent in exploring the effects of such vaccines, but to say that the use of the Hep B vaccine was done intentionally and solely for the purpose of giving Inuit people AIDS is just ludicrous, and I'll regard it as such until you can come up with better evidence.
  11. Re:Hoax? by shogun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We change our regime every 4 years

    I'm not an American but I'd like to point out that occasionally swapping between Democrats and Republicans is NOT a regime change.