Republican Aide Tries to Hire Hackers

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.'"

Comments

Hilarious

[AKAImBatman]

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?

Re:Hilarious

[drinkypoo]

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...

Re:Hilarious

[Dun Malg]

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.

Re:Hilarious

[Martin Blank]

Most of them have families that remain in their home districts. I'm all for having them work five days a week (and the incoming Congressional leaders seem to be moving in that direction), but I think it's fair to let them see their families on the weekends.

Re:Hilarious

[iluvcapra]

Actually high wages for parliamentarians are meant to make them less inclined to take bribe money

That is a good theory, but in the US every 2 or 6 years our parliamentarians are hit with a multi-million dollar liability, known as a "Campaign." The legislators are up to themselves to raise the money for these, and there are no caps on how much they or their opponent can spend.

If you want to make legislators bribe-proof, you have to make it so that they need for no money in the course of their work, which means paying them well, enough to maintain a domicile in the capital, and strictly capping campaign spending (capping fundraising, and all the exceptions and codicils on that, and the attendant free-expression issues, gets more and more unworkable all the time).

I would say all campaigns should be publicly funded, private donations forbidden, and equal money to the top 3 primary victors, but most Americans consider a campaign donation a form a free speech, and thus beyond legitimate restraint. (I think this is bullshit, but there we are.)

Republican Aide?

[Ninjaesque One]

Is he trying to improve his own records? Isn't this just a case of an idiot who tries to get people to hack their educational stuff for them? I mean, it probably will lead to a congressional scandal, but it doesn't really have much to do with the aide's aide-ness or republican-ness.

Re:Republican Aide?

[pla]

but it doesn't really have much to do with the aide's aide-ness or republican-ness.

If a guy gets busted for BBQ'ing a bald eagle, would it make it more, or less, of a story if he worked for PETA?

Although the last 12 years have made the whole concept into something of a joke, the Republicans tout themselves as the "party of reform". And we just keep seeing scandal after unethical scandal from them.

No worries, though, in another 12 years we can say the same thing about the Democrats, who apparently didn't learn from the Republicans error and now want to position themselves as the Party-O'-Reform. But, having the same complete and utter lack of ethics as all politicians, they'll start making the same egotistical blunders as the Republicans did, once they take their new seats in January.


Meet the new boss...

Re:Republican Aide?

[Dachannien]

Okay, first you pin this sort of behavior on "ambitious, young-republican types". Then you cite a bunch of names - "Rove, Gannon, DeLay, A[]bramoff" - who don't actually fit that mold, all of them being well-established, somewhat aged participants in the political arena. And finally, you ignore the fact that blind ambition easily crosses partisan boundaries, and scandal has been no stranger to Democrats as well as Republicans.

Mentioning this guy's Republican-ness in the OP's title was nothing more than a thinly-veiled, irrelevant dig on the Republican Party, when the story is really about some moron in a low-ranking political job who tried to cheat on his resume.

Re:Republican Aide?

[nathanh]

Is he trying to improve his own records? Isn't this just a case of an idiot who tries to get people to hack their educational stuff for them? I mean, it probably will lead to a congressional scandal, but it doesn't really have much to do with the aide's aide-ness or republican-ness.

Don't worry. When Fox News reports this story the closed captioning will reveal he's become a Democrat overnight.

I only wish I were joking.

Re:What the?

[jimstapleton]

Everyone knows that squirrels and pigeons have a protection from FBI spell cast on them, and cannot be photographed or photoshopped by FBI agents or those in collusion with them.

Re:This begs the question

[SatanicPuppy]

They had the whole exchange posted for a while, but it was only recently that anyone in the media bothered to track down the actual guy.

Re:What the?

[Mr. Flibble]

Um, I'm sure I won't be the only one to ask this. But how in the hell does this prove that you are not the FBI, Secret Service, Police or whoever? Even if he was on campus at the time, I'm sure any authority that you'd want to fear could get to wherever they needed to be to take that picture in the same day that he asks for it.

In case you are wondering, what they are doing is a variant of the 419 eater technique. They had no intent of following through, but they had every intent of making the guy look like a fool as they strung him along.

Re:What the?

[AKAImBatman]

Um, I'm sure I won't be the only one to ask this. But how in the hell does this prove that you are not the FBI, Secret Service, Police or whoever?

They were just messing with him. They were playing on the whole "hacker movie" stereotypes of being able to do anything with even the slightest bit of information*. The request to get a sign or buildings in the background was to solidify the idea that they wanted this information for verification purposes. They probably wanted him to believe they could zoom in from a live satellite and see the location he photographed.

They continued to jerk his chain with email exchanges like this one:

Have had a chance to set up a couple of
IDS/IPS evasion bots, perimeter scanning came up clean. Small SQL
injection issue merged with XSS shows that the backend database may be
either 768-bit encrypted or a simple 3DES matter, but a little more time
should take care of that issue. Once the tables are writable to sa,
should be ready to jump in and jump out with no problem. One of their
systems caught an early sniff, but was shut down with a smurf.

It sounds good (lots'o techno-jargon), but it's obviously nonsense to anyone who knows better.

* I don't watch 24, but I've heard some rather amusing takes on their entire "hacker" philosophy. In particular, they seem to be able to do the impossible without blinking an eye, just by wrapping it up in some techno-babble that's intended to sound good to the average joe.

The Real Mystery Is...

[CheeseburgerBrown]

The real mystery is how somebody this sharp, informed and educated managed to do so badly in college. I mean, the guy's obviously got street smarts and book smarts.

Re:Slashdot's petty partisanship.

[mollog]

I'm not surprised that yet another Republican is violating moral and legal standards to improve his/her position. I'm glad that someone outed this prick. I don't necessarily see this as an attack on Republicans on a partisan basis, but if you have a group that has a long and varied history of this sort of behavior, and you bring it up yet again, it can look partisan. I vote for honorable Republicans, so I'm not some kind of rabid partisan. I'm not impressed with the way Democrats conduct campaigns; it's half-assed, but I tend to prefer voting for Democrats.

We see Democratic boobs do all sorts of stupid, venal stuff. But when it comes to craven, cynical behavior, you have to hand it to the Republican for the no-holds-barred, down-and-dirty politicking.

Keep up the pressure on the bad guys.

Re:What the?

[ArcherB]

Everyone knows that squirrels and pigeons have a protection from FBI spell cast on them, and cannot be photographed or photoshopped by FBI agents or those in collusion with them.

Actually, their inability to be photoshopped has nothing to do with it. Pigeons are protected under whistle-blower laws.

You've gotta read the entire email trail!

[sbaker]

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.

Re:You've gotta read the entire email trail!

[b0s0z0ku]

He needs to go to jail for a few years.

"Few years" - that's a bit harsh considering nothing illegal was actually accomplished. Keep in mind that for a lot of violent crimes short of murder, the prison time isn't even a "few years." More like *a* year. The best punishment is exposing this guy for a fraud and making sure that he'll lose his job and be a laughingstock boob.

One more thing: who's to say that this was actually him not a prank designed to discredit the guy? It's not like they check ID before you surf the 'net. Maybe the article has more info, but it's currently slashdotted!

-b.

Re:A friend of ours needs to have his grades revis

[Mysticalfruit]

It would have been cooler if they'd sent this knucklehead screenshots of them doing the "hack" and it be from Uplink.
Then it would have been complete!

Yet another. . .

[smooth wombat]

shining example of the intelligence of people in my party. It's not bad enough we have this yahoo blocking phones to Democratic numbers used for providing people rides to polls on election day, or this putz who embezzled state money, let alone the chimp in charge who has flip-flopped every which way on Iraq, but now this incompetent asshole.

I know that Sandy Berger (just so no one thinks I'm biased) is a real moron but come on, how much lack of intelligence does one have to have to think that they could get away with this?

Re:Yet another. . .

[t0rkm3]

Hrmmm...

Politicians are politicians. Tis part of what makes me tire of our system. Remember the Dem that had the Nat'l Guard load up his private stuff during Katrina, asking them to defer food, troop, and rescue transport?

Lord Acton was right, will be right... forever.

That's why I would traditionally vote for Republicans, at least they are/were for smaller federal gov't more state/local control. However, this last group has hosed that whole concept up.

Professional politicians are power hungry sociopaths. How do we solve that problem?

Re:Yet another. . .

[funwithBSD]

You forgot this one:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/1/24 /213349.shtml

Slashing tires to keep people from voting.

Or John Murtha:

http://news.netscape.com/story/2006/11/15/democrat ic-culture-of-corruption-john-murtha-bribe-video

Or William Jefferson:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/21/jefferson.s earch/

Or Teddy Kennedy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappaquiddick

Or "Voted for the War before I voted against it" :

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/29/politics /main646435.shtml

Or Hiz Honor,Richard Daley:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_J._Daley

Or Boss Tweed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_Tweed

Please, politicians by default are dishonest, not just Republicans. So just remember who's dog food you are eating when shilling for one side or the other.

Re:Yet another. . .

[slamb]

Oh, please. Does Kerry's "I voted for the war before I voted against it" really belong in that list? Keep in mind that if "inarticulate moments" are in the same league as bribery, voter suppression, and manslaughter (the other items on your list), Bush is a much worse president than I ever realized... a few examples.

Please, politicians by default are dishonest, not just Republicans. So just remember who's dog food you are eating when shilling for one side or the other.

You're as much in denial as those who claim there's no corruption at all, and your beliefs are just as harmful. There's been political corruption in all parties throughout history, but not all politicians are corrupt, and not all parties are equal. Voters have recently realized that they can exert control by voting out the more corrupt party. Maybe in 20 years the Republican party will reform and the Democratic party will regress. Until then, I'm voting for Democrats.

Mirror

[suso]

To make up for that, I've created a mirror:

http://suso.suso.org/attrition1.html
http://suso.suso.org/attrition2.html (Page 2)

Re:What the?

[A nonymous Coward]

The squirrel requirement eliminates the nuts.

As a Montanan...

[genessy]

...I'm just proud my representative (or his aide) knew about the Interweb! ;)

You guys will believe anything...

[zguru]

This is so funny. You guys will believe anything posted on the Internet! :)

Re:posting the emails was illegal and unproductive

[Rob T Firefly]

IANAL, but if I understand correctly, either party of a two-way communication can generally make them public unless it's declared private by some sort of legal notice (terms of use, legal disclaimers in the sigs, or something.) Since Attrition is a publicly available website, and maintainer of all those public Infosec mailing lists, it's probably not legally reasonable for this guy to assume his emails would be kept private. After all, he didn't even have any real idea who the person was he contacted, much less have a nondisclosure agreement with him.

West Wing Obligatory

[hellfire]

This reminds me of a Hilarious West Wing scene:

[CJ is mad at Josh for posting to the message board of a Josh Lyman fansite]
C.J. Cregg: If you ever post anything on that website again, I will shove a motherboard so far up your ass... What?
Josh Lyman: You DO know I outrank you, right?
C.J. Cregg: SO FAR UP YOUR ASS...

B people hire C people, and so on down the chain..

[Animats]

There's a classic comment that A people hire A people, but B people hire C people. Bush has not exactly been known for great job appointments. If you actually follow his appointments, it's embarrassing, even if you're a Republican. They're loyal, but often not very good. (It's not just that lightweight at FEMA, "Mr. Torture" at Justice, and the economic advisers from Enron; there's a long, painful list of bad high level hires.)

Once you get the institutional idea that each level hires dumber people below them, a few steps down the food chain, people like this turkey are getting jobs.

Punishment, Web 2.0 style

[SnappingTurtle]

Todd's punishment is going to be uniquely modern... or will it?

The punishment is that this is going to go viral. It's just too darn interesting seeing people doing something they shouldn't. For the rest of his life people will be reading about this. It's not yet mentioned in Denny Rehberg's Wikipedia page, but it will. Todd will probably get his own Wikipedia page [dead link as of this moment but we'll see how long that lasts]. There will probably be a Snopes article too.

In other words, Todd will be publicy humiliated. It'll be like having to wear a big red letter...

Re:Slashdot's petty partisanship.

[plantman-the-womb-st]

Partisan or not, the fact remains thus. The title and the summary say nothing about anything political save to mention the man in question is a republican aide. Because he __is__ a republican aide. Did the title or the summary go on about how this is typical republican behavior? Nope. Several comments did, but that's not the summary or title is it? Admittedly it would be just as valid to call him a congressional aide. But I fail to see the noting of a job title as partisan.

Re:Would we be reading this if he were a democrat?

[Abcd1234]

It's simple:

a) The republican party claims to be the party of morality and "family values".
b) There's been a rash of republican political gaffs in the last few months which, in the face of 'a', are really pretty funny.

So laugh, ffs. 'cuz, lets face it... it really is funny.

Me am Republican! Me am victim of everybody!

[MS-06FZ]

You have my deepest condolences. I know that the Republican Party is a persecuted minority these days: Nobody gives the poor, innocent Republicans a fair shake. Everyone else in the world hates God and America and, therefore, Republicans as well. And there's the vast conspiracies, the lynchings, and all the inequities and indignities Republicans must suffer for no other reason than following the divine hand of God - appointed by holy power and elected by a clear majority choice. Oh, woe be the poor Republican, for he is a poor, battered victim of a world which is against him for no good reason at all.

This guy made Slashdot because he was especially stupid, not simply because he was caught, and not because he was a Republican. He tried to commit a crime, but went about it in a very idiotic way - made contact with someone he had no logical reason to trust and requested an illegal job, discussed details that were way out of his depth and technical expertise, freely gave away his personal information, went outside to take a picture of some pigeons (I guess to prove that he is one himself) - the whole story just shows an incredible lack of intelligence and sophistication - any kind of subtlety or careful discretion in how he sought criminal help - and he got completely suckered as a result. A tale like this is great "News For Nerds" fodder - dope who knows nothing about computers tries to contract for a system intrusion goes in over his head with someone who actually knows a thing or two, and gets exposed.

Stealing national security documents isn't "News for Nerds", it's just "News". Go watch some Fox News if you want to see that story, I'm sure they'll rattle their sabers and go on about it for weeks - because they are not part of the conspiracy. They are not biased. They will give you the straight story, just the facts, and let you draw your own conclusion. England Prevails!

RFC 1149

[TranscendentalAnarch]

type of access required to access the systems (internet? LAN? dialup? carrier pigeon?) I'm going to submit an addendum to RFC 1149 requesting that the pigeons be trained to release their excrement on moronic, unsuspecting members of congress during transmission.

As a hard-core liberal, I agree

[spun]

I'm as liberal as they come: anarcho-syndicalist, it doesn't get more hardcore leftist than that. Normally I am all for anything that makes the Republicans look bad, but this is just dumb. It's like how news stations only mention the race of an alleged criminal if they are non-white. Who cares what race a murderer is, or what party a doofus belongs too? What's that got to do with anything?

Until I read the summary, I was hoping this was some kind of political hack attempt that would put another big black eye on the Repugnicans, but no such luck, it's just some dumbass trying to get his grades changed. The story is funny enough to warrant being on Slashdot's front page without mentioning the word "Republican" at all.

Re:As a hard-core liberal, I agree

[dircha]

"I'm as liberal as they come: anarcho-syndicalist, it doesn't get more hardcore leftist than that."

Hoho! The anarcho-communists spit in your general direction, bourgeoisie scum!

Re:As a hard-core liberal, I agree

[spun]

Spitting is fine, just as long as there aren't any ice picks involved...

Re:Would we be reading this if he were a democrat?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

There are idiots on both sides of the aisle.

This is information-free. If 95% of Republicans were idiots and 5% of Democrats were idiots it'd still be correct to say "There are idiots on both sides of the aisle", so it doesn't tell you anything useful.

The question isn't whether or not there are idiots on one side or the other. The question is how many idiots there are on one side or the other, to what extent are those idiots informing policy and decision making, and most of all, how many of those idiots happen to be President right now.

Re:What the?

[Em Adespoton]

I take it you missed the MythBusters episode where they successfully recorded audio on to a clay pot using nothing but a turntable, the pot and some straw?

Of course, the length of the audio was less than 1 second (the time it takes to rotate the pot once) but hey...