Ron Paul Linked To Criminal Computer Hacking And Spam Campaign
Wired:
If Texas congressman Ron Paul is elected president in 2008, he may be the first leader of the free world put into power with the help of a global network of hacked PCs spewing spam, according to computer-security researchers who’ve analyzed a recent flurry of e-mail supporting the long-shot Republican candidate.
“This is clearly a criminal act in support of a campaign, which has been committed with or without their knowledge,” says Gary Warner, the University of Alabama’s director of research in computer forensics. “The question is, will we see more and more of this, or will this bring shame to the campaigns and will they make clear that this is not a form of acceptable behavior by their supporters?” Warner pointed to provisions of the federal Can-Spam Act.
Ron Paul spokesman Jesse Benton says the campaign has no knowledge of the scam.
Some participants in the online political world have long suspected Paul’s technically sophisticated fan base of manipulating online tools and polls to boost the appearance of a wide base of support. But the University of Alabama analysis is the first to document any internet shenanigans.
The finding is significant, because Paul’s online support — as gauged by blog mentions, friends on social-networking sites such as MySpace and popularity in online polls — has garnered him wide mainstream print and television coverage, despite his relatively poor performance in offline polling.
The spamming allegations are based on a slew of e-mails captured by contributors to the university’s Spam Data Mining for Law Enforcement Applications project, a research venture that receives 2.5 million spam messages a day, and selects about 100,000 a week for analysis. The project receives its spam from other researchers with ties to ISPs, and in some cases from “trap” addresses that have never been used for any other purpose.
They were received by the lab following the latest televised Republican debate Sunday afternoon, and had 16 different subject lines, including “Ron Paul Wins GOP Debate! HMzjoqO” and “Ron Paul Exposes Federal Reserve! SBHBcSO.” The random string of characters at the end is a common spammer’s technique to circumvent bulk e-mail filtering.
The spam went to “several hundred” e-mail addresses harvested for the university project, says Warner.
The e-mails had phony names attached to real-looking e-mail addresses. When lab researchers examined the IP addresses of the computers from which the messages had been sent, it turned out that they were sprinkled around the globe in countries as far away from each other as South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, Nigeria and Brazil.
“The interesting thing was that we had the same subject line from the same IP address, and it claimed to be from different users from within the United States,” Warner says.
One e-mail was designed to look as if it came from within a major Silicon Valley corporation, he notes. But when the researchers looked up the IP address, the computer from which the note was sent was actually in South Korea. Another e-mail that was designed to look as if it came from Houston was sent from Italy.
That pattern led Warner to conclude that the messages had been laundered through a botnet — also a standard spammer practice, though a decidedly illegal one.
The body of a message examined by Wired News covered familiar Paul campaign themes, such as ending the war and eliminating the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Reserve.
It also read:
Ron Paul is for the people, unless you want your children to have human implant RFID chips, a National ID card and create a North American Union and see an economic collapse far worse than the great depression. Vote for Ron Paul he speaks the truth and the media and government is afraid of him.
Last week, the prominent conservative blog Redstate banned new Paul supporters from posting on its site because of their “shilling” for the candidate in conversations that had nothing to do with politics. Other sites have disabled their online polls, because they suspected that they were being gamed by Ron Paul supporters.
Notwithstanding such charges, Paul’s third-quarter haul of $5 million in campaign contributions seems to show that he does have a larger base of support than offline polls indicate.
Dan Hubbard of security company Websense reviewed one of the messages captured by the university. He believes that there was some type of spam-laundering in use — though not necessarily a botnet.
“I have not seen a malicious-code sample yet that is sending these mails, therefore I would say it’s likely that either they are using a botnet, or they are using open relays,” he says, referring to unsecured e-mail servers that will accept anonymous e-mail and forward it back out to the internet.
Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said in an e-mail, “This is the first I’ve heard about this situation.”
“If it is true, it could be done by a well-intentioned yet misguided supporter or someone with bad intentions trying to embarrass the campaign,” he wrote while ferrying his boss to tape an appearance on The Tonight Show. “Either way, this is independent work, and we have no connection.”
Be respectful of others and their opinions. Inflammatory remarks and inane leftist drivel will be deleted. It ain’t about free speech, remember you’re in a private domain. My website, my prerogative.
If you can't handle using your real email address, don't bother posting a comment.
I’m not one to make allegations I can’t prove but I’ve wondered whether there might be a palindromic conspiracy behind Paul’s apparent internet support.
October 31st, 2007 at 5:12 amI really don’t understand why everyone hates this guy. He is running on almost the EXACT platform that Bush ran on in 2000. (limited Small government, non-interventionist foreign policy, major tax and welfare reform, libertarianism, constitutionalism. . .) Seriously, this is what Reagan preached.
October 31st, 2007 at 8:59 amThis is no supprise, it is stating the obvious. But it will go nowhere, as a legal case. Look at HRC for G-ds sake. RP is a nonissue, like a fart, he’s full of stink but no substance.
October 31st, 2007 at 10:22 amI live in Ron Paul’s congressional district and he’s not even that popular here. He gets re-elected because of Tom Delay’s gerrymandering scheme and because no other serious conservatives run against him due to how our county party is ran. Although he is a really nice guy on a personal level, he and the majority of his “followers” are kooky. We’re talking 9/11 troofers, Pro drug legalization, Gov. Richards’ UFO truth crowd plus many more of the type. In fact, when you look at contributions to his congressional campaigns, a big majority of his support comes from outside of Texas. Anyone with atleast a high school level education in American and World history also knows that his Constitutional interpretations are not supported by facts or legislative record and he is so naive in foreign and economic policy that I get a mental picture of Homer Simpson every time I think of his proposals. Seriously, does anyone really want to go back to living off the gold standard (aka the Great Depression)?
October 31st, 2007 at 10:42 amRon Paul is a fucking dumb ass.
October 31st, 2007 at 12:03 pmJack,
“I really don’t understand why everyone hates this guy.” [Ron Paul]
Because, unlike Reagan and GWB, Ron Paul is either incapable of or unwilling to provide for this nation’s security.
Reagan was hardly non-interventionist. Grenada, anyone? Libya? The Evil Empire?
October 31st, 2007 at 12:04 pmJust to set the record straight, neither Prez. Reagan or Bush ran on a nonintervention policy. They ran on a policy of not allowing international bodies to regulate our foreign policy and get us intwined in foreign conflicts that had no bearing on our national interests (unlike Billary CCCLinton who coincidentally had us attacking the wrong side in Bosnia). That’s a pretty solid difference when compairing to Rep. Paul’s isolationist theory (which only has historical ties to the 1930-40’s Republicans where it was more taken as opposition to Progressive/Democratic admins as opposed to being a real belief - no one complained about Teddy’s Corollary and the Monroe Doctrine when they were making money off it). Had Rep. Paul’s theories been consistent with constitutional intent and thereby adhered to by previous generations, the world would look much different than it does now (Barbary Coast, Spanish-American War, Panamanian independence from Cuba, WWI, WWII, Persian Gulf). Not to mention that our involvement in Mid. East politics began not with the discovery of oil (they had it before we got invlolved) but as a way to counter act Germany in WWII and also to limit the Soviet influence during and after the war (we were in Iran before we teamed up with Saudi Arabia and it wasn’t about religious zealots in the end as much as it was socialist operatives from the USSR - but that’s not common knowledge). But this does not excuse the mistakes we’ve made and continue to make.
October 31st, 2007 at 12:53 pm…cont.
What it does mean is that we need someone who is able to understand and interpret things when compared to the historical context. And a naive libertarian is incapable of that because ultimately they’re more concerned with themselves than democrats are.
October 31st, 2007 at 12:58 pmHillary, Obama, Ghouliani, and Romney are non-issues. They are inconsequential to the 2008 election. I’m not one to make allegations I can’t prove but I’ve wondered whether there might be a palindromic conspiracy behind all of their apparent “poll” support.
October 31st, 2007 at 5:33 pmRon Paul Campaign Under Cyber Attack
There has been a recent flurry of news articles that have made the conjecture that the Ron Paul campaign or his supporters are in possession of a botnet and are using it to generate spam emails for the candidate. I have been in the business of computer technology for a long time and have good friends in the IT security business and we have discussed this at length. Cui-bono (who benefits)
I find it far more likely that this botnet spam attack is not the design of the Paul campaign or any of its supporters. It is far more likely that this is the release of a first round of direct cyber attack against the Ron Paul campaign. I base this opinion on the fact that the attack is becoming clearly targeted at the youtube videos of Ron Paul. Youtube links to his videos are beginning to be inserted into the the body of these spam message and as a direct result the video’s are being pulled by youtube for violation of their terms of use policy.
This attack method can do far more harm than good for the Ron Paul campaign so I will make a guess that this is the work of those in the NSA using cyber war tactics out of loyalty or possibly under orders to use this stealth attack method to derail the Ron Paul campaign by using the campaign’s online strength against them.
I expect that after these attackers have used this method to remove the best google and youtube videos touting the Ron Paul campaign, that the attack method will change and will then go after other key components of the campaign’s online strength such as the Web 2.0 communities. These utilities will likely be spammed and the organizations using the applications will be banned from their use.
This is nefarious and demonstrates the kind of tactics that the establishment could use to serve their interest in stopping the advance of Ron Paul and the Revolution for freedom that he is leading as well as his Presidential bid. I can only hope that the Ron Paul online army has some equally talented cyber warriors that can help stop this attack before it is ramped up even further.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:55 pm“This attack method can do far more harm than good for the Ron Paul campaign so I will make a guess that this is the work of those in the NSA using cyber war tactics out of loyalty or possibly under orders to use this stealth attack method to derail the Ron Paul campaign by using the campaign’s online strength against them”
LOL. Fuckin’ A. Why the HELL would the NSA want to jeopardize his chances at winning an election?
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:28 am