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...

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: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: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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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: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.

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.