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Sweden's Watergate
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Sep 04, 2006 01:15 PM
from the all's-fair-in-politics? dept.
from the all's-fair-in-politics? dept.
An anonymous reader writes, "Sweden's ruling Social Democratic Party's internal network has been illegally accessed several hundred times over a period of several months. Party treasurer Tommy Ohlstroem describes the incident as "wide-scale and systematic." Computer security company Sentor's investigation has revealed intrusions originating from computers belonging to Sweden's Liberal Party, and with the upcoming election in only two weeks many commentators are already describing this as Sweden's Watergate (Swedish only). An employee of the Young Liberals has admitted to unauthorized access, but a series of mysterious coincidences in the form of exceptionally well timed public announcements by the Liberal Party suggests the involvement of more than one person."
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Bad Password Allowed Swedish Watergate 248 comments
fredr1k writes "The Swedish Watergate reported earlier this week was possible because of the usage of terrible weak passwords (Swedish) and a not functional IT policy. The Swedish newspaper Göterborgs-Posten reports the source of the password was a partymember who's account was "sigge" with password "sigge" and was "stolen" in march this year. Seasoned Slashdot readers would call it "a-not-so-hard-to-crack-password". "
Offsite: Mysterious Coincidences (in Swedish)
Offsite: Sweden's Social Democratic Party
Offsite: Sweden's Liberal Partty
Offsite: Sentor
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Explanation of 'swedish liberal' (Score:5, Insightful)
(Generally, I don't find terms like 'left' or 'right' helpful for a serious political discussion, but it will do for slashdot)
Well, that is not exactly true... (Score:5, Informative)
- Social Democrates, pragmatic power party with an emphasis on a large welfare state and a regulated labour market.
- Moderates, previously somewhat conservative that now have triangulated the social democrates more or less totally.
- Peoples Party - Liberals, Social-liberal party that now could be placed to the right of the moderates.
Since there are seven major parties in sweden instead of two large coalitions like in the United States I find it hard to compare them to either the democrats or the republicans. For example it is hard to find any great amount protectionism in any of the parties platforms, but all favour a welfare state with socialized medicine for example. So you are over-simplifying things a bit too much!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Bruce
Re:Explanation of 'swedish liberal' (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no expert, but I'd suggest that the United States is the only country in the world where 'liberal' is a derogatory term.
Parent
Re:Explanation of 'swedish liberal' (Score:5, Funny)
*sigh*
Parent
Well, from what the article suggests... (Score:3, Interesting)
As others have observerd here, politics outside the US is far more complicated than "left and right" (hell, even US politics has more dimension than that, though the fact that only two parties have power simplifies things). Even the Canadian landscape is far different politically and in some ways mirrors
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Explanation of 'swedish liberal' (Score:5, Interesting)
The largest party in the opposing coalition, that is "Socialdemokraterna" is the hackee and this smaller party in the other block is the hacker, but, living in Sweden, my suspicions run deeper than this:
*- A focus on hacking so the governors can impose higher surveillance.
Remember the ruling Swedish coalition, with the Socialdemokraterna in the leadership;
Taking orders from Hollywood and confiscating the Pirate Bay servers...
*- A very Swedish joke, i.e. an easily exposed attempt
- that shows the oppositions lack of IT-skills
(That's a head-shot in the pre-election posturing IMHO)
*- This breach is old news, why expose it now?
*- Profit!! [Sorry, can't ever make a list without Profit! at the end
Parent
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The *centrist* Democrats. The left "liberal" wing of the Democratic party was against NAFTA and FTAA.
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I'm Swedish and I'm pretty leftist, but that is plain FUD.
Anti-immigration and racism:
It holds true to the extreme right-wing parties that are not in the Swedish Riksdag, such as Nationaldemokraterna (openly racist, pseudo-nazi party), Sverigedemokraterna (ultra-nationalists) and such, but not the etablished right-wing parties. If you count HBQT-intolerance (homo/bi/queer/tra
As always, Germany is just a step ahead... (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems like a borrowed idea (Score:5, Interesting)
The internal server of the Socialist Party turned out to be a password protected http server containing some upcoming promotional campaign pictures, with some trivial password like hsp:redflower. The pass somehow leaked and thousands of other people viewed it, myself included, before it became a "scandal" and "proof of hacking" and "ServerGate".
I hope the swedish parties are more grown up than to play stupid games like that and I hope the swedish public is more educated than the hungarian, so that they can tell if nothing extraordinarily happened, just some PR hype..
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The Alliance of Young Democrats is just a name, the party started in 1988 in a college. They have been the main government party before and they are the main opposition party now. They cannot said to be
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I hope the swedish parties are more grown up than to play stupid games like that and I hope the swedish public is more educated than the hungarian, so that they can tell if nothing extraordinarily happened, just some PR hype.
A little from column A and a little from column B, the username and password used to illegally access the site were much too simple, but the site does contain extremely sensitive information such as classified reports from the security police. Overall I think it is fair to say that
Many misleading statements (Score:5, Informative)
2. If was done by ONE member of the LUF - not the Liberal Party - LUF is the youth organisations associated with the Liberal Party.
3. He did it by trying to login using the same password as the username and other simple methods - and cracked 3 accounts. Socialist party had not a very secure system.
4. The journalist claims ha was approached by a member of the liberal party who showed him how to accces the webbsite on a cyber cafe. That member claimed that many within the Liberal party know about it. Even though as far is known only 1(one) person did know about it.
5. The journalist was/is a active member of the Socialist party youth section.
6. The socialist party has know about this break-in for some time.
7. The disclosure was made the same night as the major candidate to take over as prime minister was on TV being questioned - the leader of the Moderate party. (swedish right wing - but more like US democrats)
9. The Socialistic party has before had an politician send emails pretending to be the Moderate party leader to journalists - trying to make it sound like the party leader was an idiot - and the socialist party member got fired in a scandal.
There is an election this month in Sweden. The alleged crime was committed last year and until mars this year but not publicly known until now just before the election.
You take your pick of who has done most to use this to win the election.
New editor! (Score:2)
Oops, sorry - NOT a dupe (Score:2)
Bad Joke Thread (Score:4, Funny)
Hee bor shteer, bom bor shteer doo,
A dish-pi-doo.
Bor bor shteer, lum bor shteer doo,
Bork! Bork! Bork!
Shteer!
Sheeba shleeba goo, dish mooga hacken PC. Ung gish libo hacken PC, mish gee looder bouffer ooverfloo. Gee pish der bouffer ooverfloo mish der leety scripty in der shellcode mik joo inken Intel assoumbler. Fish, ung gish leeber scannen porten mooga funky nmap, bish der open port shif lish der foorwoll. Dish skel loder mish der leety scripty, spur gifor der bouffer ooverfloo, ung desh ooger morgen der stackenschmoosher! Ung gesh, mooga dish spur lorger hacken PC!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
A bit OT, but since we're on the Swedish elections (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A bit OT, but since we're on the Swedish electi (Score:3, Informative)
While I haven't seen any recent polls on them specifically, they will almost certainly have no impact whatsoever. To get a seat in parliament, you need atleast 4% of the popular vote (this is to weed out small, very fringe parties, such as nazis and pirates ;) and in the last election, around 5.3 million people voted. 4% of 5.3 million is 212000 votes. They have no chance in hell of getting that many.
Much more interesting are two other tiny parties, FI (feministic initiative) and a party that's called the
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yeah except that in the case "liberals" are the most right-wing, they'd be equivalent to US' GOP, except that Sweden's politics (and all of Europe's politics in fact) have a gravity center much farther "left" than the US'.
Oh wait, maybe that was your point?
Re:It's probably not close to Watergate (Score:5, Insightful)
The break in at the Watergate was not most of the Watergate story, although it was the germ from which the scandal of Watergate grew. It was, as you say, just dirty tricks.
What Watergate was about was about the Nixon administration trying to cover up the Watergate break in, and in the course of doing so using the powers of the Presidency to undermine the law. Every American has been taught: the powers of the President are granted to uphold the law and defend the nation. It is obvious to all but the most partisan Americans that when a President uses his powers to undermine the law, it is an abomination that strikes at the foundation of our nation's identity.
The single act that fatally poisoned the Nixon presidency was when he fired Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor, for getting too close to the truth. When he was fired, he said this: "Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people." It was a ringing endorsement of the American people, and a throwing down of the guantlet in the court of public opinion. My mother-in-law was a Harvard Law School secretary for many years, and Archibald Cox was one of "her" professors. During the Iran Contra scandal, he remarked to her that it was unlikely that much would come of it, because when a President decides to break the law, there is really no practical way to stop him, unless the American people rise up against him. In Watergate, American public opinion rose up agains the President. In Iran Contra, it may have disagreed with him, but it did not rise up as a whole.
Over the many years I've been following politics, one thing has become very clear: democracy doesn't ensure that politicians pursue wise or virtuous policies. Vietnam, the Watergate coverup, Iran-Contra, the second Iraw War; no practical democratic system can prevent such misadventures from starting.
The great virtue of democracy lies not in preventing folly, but in the inevitability of people doing collectively what individuals who have identified themselves with a disasterous plan seldom can: they change their mind.
I like to remember this when prospects for my country look bleak, so that I can never be totally discouraged. Over time, there are truths that are too large and connected to too many lives to be hidden. Inevitably, the scales fall from the people's eyes, and when that day comes it is a day of reckoning for politicians who pursue the Big Lie. It does not prevent untold harm from befalling; indeed it is only great harm that brings this about. But as long as there is any memory of democracy, any shred of the democratic spirit left in us, we will exercise the greatest democratic right of all: throwing the bums out.
Parent