RNC Site Shut Down by Hackers

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,40016,00.html

Wired News Report
9:35 a.m. Nov. 7, 2000 PST

[RNC defacement archived at (Where else?):
http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/2000/11/06/www.gop.org/ -WK]

A leading Republican website was hacked just hours before polls opened
Tuesday in what Republicans said was an effort to discredit their
candidate, Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

Late Monday the Republican National Committee's website was hacked and
replaced with a lengthy anti-Bush tirade, according to RNC spokesman
Tom Yu, who added that the unknown hacker also left a link to Al
Gore's campaign website.

"It's obviously a dirty trick late in the campaign by the Democrats,"
Yu said.

"We're disappointed at the large amount of dirty tricks being played
this late in the campaign by the Democrats and we hope that Al Gore
and the Democratic Party will join us in denouncing this kind of dirty
trick," he added.

Yu declined to detail the anti-Bush message that was posted on the RNC
Internet site, saying he did not want to give the words added
credibility by repeating them.

Jenny Backus, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee,
characterized the notion that her party was somehow involved in
hacking the Republican Web site as "unfounded charges."

Larry Purpuro, the RNC's deputy chief of staff who heads the party's
technology inititative, said that the hack "certainly didn't interrupt
our online efforts to get out the vote."

During the last few days, the Republicans have been sending out many
e-mail messages from some of the party's biggest names in an effort to
rally the conservative base.

For example, a message sent out Monday night to 925,000 Republicans
was marked as being from Colin Powell, the former Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff -- e-mail address colin.powell () usa com.

Powell encouraged Republicans to join him "in helping elect our
Republican team."

As of Tuesday morning, the RNC's site was still down, but Purpuro said
that it would be back up within a few hours.

He said that the incident was still being investigated.


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