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Republican Aide Tries to Hire Hackers

Posted by Zonk on from the hack-it-yourself-like-the-rest-of-us dept.

Noryungi writes "It seems as though a Republican Communications Director contacted Attrition.org, trying to hire hackers to improve his educational records. I don't know what is his dumbest move: (a) contacting Attrition in the first place, (b) using a real name Yahoo email address or (c) speaking at length about what he needed? Kudos to the Attrition crew for posting the whole email dialogue online! A sample from the conversation: 'Jericho: First, let's be clear. You are soliciting me to break the law and hack into a computer across state lines. That is a federal offense and multiple felonies. Obviously I can't trust anyone and everyone that mails such a request, you might be an FBI agent, right? So, I need three things to make this happen: 1. A picture of a squirrel or pigeon on your campus. One close-up, one with background that shows buildings, a sign, or something to indicate you are standing on the campus. 2. The information I mentioned so I can find the records once I get into the database. 3. Some idea of what I get for all my trouble.'"

7 of 427 comments (clear)

  1. Hilarious by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Interesting
    todd... no more.. omfg we are SO busted.. fuck fuck fuck FUCK FUCK
    everything was PERFECT until their night noc ran a reverse udp traceroute
    back to one of the hosts we had set up after that, straight DOWNHILL.
    i've already been called twice by my isp asking about unusual activity,
    some other shit about access attempts to a federally monitored system they
    have everything in logs including the rot-26 stuff that finally got me
    access all goes back to your login sorry i really fucked up BAD


    I'm sorry, I keeled over laughing from that part. They really had him strung along with the whole thing. Although, I think he started to catch on after the "bust":

    I was getting
    serious cold feet and going to tell you to abort until
    I saw your last email. To that end, I have spoken
    about this to no one as we agreed and I will not speak
    of it in the future. As a gesture of good faith, I was
    hoping you guys would remove our correspondence from
    your web site. Isn't that risky for all of us to have
    it up there?


    Honestly, the more I see of this stuff, the more I wonder if it isn't time for a congress reform rather than any of the billion other little "reforms" that congress proposes. The original intent of the founding fathers was that regular people would run for office and represent the best interests of their constituents; in the tradition of Cincinnatus They certainly never intended for the "career" politicians we see today. Too much money, organized crime, and generally dispicable people getting into office.

    The only question is, what is the best approach to encourage more honorable folks to run for office? Perhaps the terms of office should be limited? That would certainly help discourage careering. Limits on advertising budgets would be good, but difficult to police. Any other ideas?
    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    1. Re:Hilarious by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Interesting
      The only question is, what is the best approach to encourage more honorable folks to run for office? Perhaps the terms of office should be limited? That would certainly help discourage careering. Limits on advertising budgets would be good, but difficult to police. Any other ideas?

      Yeah, how about congressional salary caps that bring them down to the median income in the US? That way, if they want a raise, they have to improve the quality of life for all people. Mind you, you have to include the unemployed, so that there's a bunch of zeroes in there to bring the average down - to give them motivation to combat unemployment.

      They say that democracies fail when people realize that they can vote themselves entitlements. What about congress? They've been voting themselves entitlements continually, while the minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation in more than a decade...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Hilarious by Dun+Malg · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The original intent of the founding fathers was that regular people would run for office and represent the best interests of their constituents

      Perhaps this is testament to what regular people are truly like.

      Unfortunately, I think you've hit the nail on the head. The Founding Fathers idea of Cincinnatus style service was based on the premise that those volunteering to manage government for short times were intelligent, competent folks who had something better to do. The idea was that they'd do it out of a sense of civic duty, then return to their much more profitable and pleasant private ventures. Nowadays, government is full of a certain type of enthusiastic, hardworking, but not necessarily particularly smart sort of person who's willing to "pay his dues". He works as an Underpaid Toady to a Senator or what have you, until he can muster the political capital to get enough of the slugs already in power to back him for a shot at the "big leagues". They're people who go into government because they think they know how things should be run. They're scum.
      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    3. Re:Hilarious by PerlDudeXL · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually high wages for parliamentarians are meant to make them less inclined to take bribe money (Theory here!!!)

  2. Pure comedy gold. by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It's like reading about the guy who tried to hire an undercover cop to kill his wife...The poor joker is so obviously clueless, but trying to play it down. Every time he starts asking real questions, they just bury him in bs, and he buys it...It's so obvious they're screwing with him. At one point they get him to send 'em some snapshots of local squirrels.

    An entertaining read.

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  3. A friend of ours needs to have his grades revised by JavaScrybe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Am I the only one reminded of a very good independant british computer game?

    Of course, you'd have to bounce your connexion through InterNIC, hack into the International Academic Database, disable the proxy and clear your logs afterwards... :D

    --
    Lex
    1) /. post 2) .sig 3) ??? 4) Profit!
  4. You've gotta read the entire email trail! by sbaker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's just hilarious - this guy is supposed to be a Republican Communications Director?! A Communications Director didn't realise he was posting to a public site using his real name?! Yikes!

    When they tell him that the Feds may have busted the operation by cracking their rot-26 encryption I nearly choked on my breakfast (cold pizza of course)! This is a classic.

    On one of the linked sites, the guy is claiming that he was 'under the influence' for the whole exchange and is 'seeking treatment'. So he's claiming he was blind drunk for the entire two weeks? Wow - the Republicans either have better parties than I ever suspected - or they truly are drowning their sorrows after recent election defeats!

    He needs to go to jail for a few years.

    --
    www.sjbaker.org