Obama, McCain Campaigns Both Hacked, Files Compromised

dunezone writes "As the election ends, news is coming out from both campaigns on what happened behind closed doors. During the summer, the Obama campaign had their systems hacked, but so did McCain — and not by each other, but by a third party. '... both the FBI and the Secret Service came to the campaign with an ominous warning: "You have a problem way bigger than what you understand," an agent told Obama's team. "You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system." The following day, Obama campaign chief David Plouffe heard from White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, to the same effect: "You have a real problem ... and you have to deal with it." The Feds told Obama's aides in late August that the McCain campaign's computer system had been similarly compromised.'" Also from the article: "Officials at the FBI and the White House told the Obama campaign that they believed a foreign entity or organization sought to gather information on the evolution of both camps' policy positions — information that might be useful in negotiations with a future administration."

Is that all? The IntarTubes have a solution!

[AKAImBatman]

Officials at the FBI and the White House told the Obama campaign that they believed a foreign entity or organization sought to gather information on the evolution of both camps' policy positions

Is that all they're after? Pff. The Internet Archive [archive.org] already lets me do that. And if that's too much work, the candidates have already done the graphical diffs [versionista.com] for us!

/tongue in cheek

Re:Who....

[Ethanol-fueled]

Our adversaries(even though China and Russia are technically our "allies") aren't the only ones who seek to gain from inside knowledge of foreign policy plans.

Israel [wrmea.com] is a good example but there are many others. Somebody hurry up and post other examples before some mods with sticky trigger fingers see this and mod me down for being a "racist Jew-hater".

Re:Who....

[Anonymous Coward]

it was a demented knife-wielding escaped lunatic libertarian zombie mutant

Re:Is that all? The IntarTubes have a solution!

[illumin8]

Did anyone read the rest of the article? I find it hilarious that Caribou Barbie went on an even bigger shopping spree than previously reported:

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family--clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.

Wait, it gets better:

According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

I am so glad we won't be hearing from her at least until 2012 or so... Corruption in Alaska? You betcha!

Re:Nothing to see here

[worthawholebean]

Having worked on the Obama campaign, mostly with the data end, I have to say they did a really good job. There are a few things that could have been improved, sure, but overall the system scaled very well until the last few days when the load became just ridiculous. Even then, it only displayed minor misbehavior - it worked just as quickly as before. The vast majority of volunteers have read/limited write access to volunteer and voter lists. I don't believe I had access to any donor information. The fact is, below the upper echelons, a data leak is really, really insignificant, because the data is essentially publicly available anyway. We got all the starting information for our database from the DNC, which got it from voter rolls. I'm assuming here they don't store credit card numbers from donations, etc.

Re:Or it coult just be /b/tards having a bit of fu

[Fred Ferrigno]

Anonymous is just the 4chan equivalent of Anonymous Coward. It's not supposed to be a group or an identity. Some of them just decided "We Are Anonymous" sounded cool, but they were using the word in a completely literal sense.

Re:Nothing to see here

[Locke2005]

Credit card numbers were handled very carefully; a paid staffer processed the donation first, then very carefully obscured the numbers with a black marker before handing off the form to data entry. We did have access to name, address, and amount donated information for all supporters, but like you said, that is a matter of public record -- we had the same information for the competitor's donors (and yes, several people donated to both candidates). There is a huge amount of data there (e.g. the voter registration data of everyone in the state), but other than getting a press release a few hours before it's made public, I really don't think any of the information is particularly valuable to anyone else.

Re:Is that all? The IntarTubes have a solution!

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

As far as I know, you can't nominate yourself.
Well the previous governor Murkowski who followed Gravel(yeah that Gravel) into the Senate, ran for Gov. of Alaska, won and appointed his daughter to full out the remainder of his term, which pissed so many people off they may have stripped that power from the governor otherwise, I see no reason Ms. Palin couldn't make herself or her husband the next Senator from AK.