Conffederate
Confederate

August 30, 2008

Is the Obama Campaign Behind Smear Sites?

This is an interesting find. Charles Johnson does the rundown, showing that Sarah Palin Supports Gay Rights and Obamadefense.com share the same IP address of 74.208.74.232.

Copy and paste that into your address bar, and guess where you end up being redirected? Obama campaign Web site, Fight the Smears.

Johnson also notes that other pro-Obama and anti-McCain web sites trace back to the same IP address. Are there IP sleuths out there who can conclusively run down the ownership of these sites?


If Barack Obama's campaign is associated with these sites (not yet proven by any stretch, I hasten to add), the campaign would seem to be in direct violation of campaign laws.

Are there any campaign law attorneys out there who could speak to this possibility with more authority?

Posted by Confederate Yankee at August 30, 2008 03:23 PM
Comments

Do you know what IP spoofing is?

Posted by: Duh at August 30, 2008 03:54 PM

IP spoofing? Really? Do you know what IP spoofing is "Duh"? If it was IP spoofing then your browser wouldn't lead anywhere, because the IP was spoofed... Run back to your Windows 3.11 for Dummies book and try to find some other technical term to throw out there.

Posted by: foxops at August 30, 2008 04:08 PM

As Johnson notes in updates, the site is unrelated either campaign, but under what theory would it be illegal for a campaign to create a site like that? I'm happy to do the legal research, but I don't see a theory here.

Posted by: jpe at August 30, 2008 04:20 PM

The fun part about the veto was that the Alaska Attorney General told Palin that the bill was indefensible and would be overturned as unconstitutional. Palin saved the state money by vetoing the bill, even though she is opposed to gay marriage.

Posted by: Two Dogs at August 30, 2008 04:24 PM

You're an idiot. IP spoofing is hijacking the browser to go to an alternate site, while it appears as the primary site.

Posted by: Duh at August 30, 2008 04:28 PM

Duh, the definition you provided is not IP spoofing but URL spoofing, a completely different issue.

Perhaps before attacking others you should make sure you're using the correct terminology.

Otherwise you prove yourself to be an idiot, and an arrogant idiot at that.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at August 30, 2008 04:47 PM

Nerd fight! "Duh" what you're describing is a man in the middle attack. For that to work DNS caches across the world would have to be poisoned - or a machine at every ISP backbone to handle the task... or maybe you're talking about browser hijacking through some kind of xss attack? Dude, when you're presented with multiple explanations for a condition the simple one is usually the right one. By your logic it could also be extraterrestrials using electromagnetic interference from across the cosmos to twiddle individual bits on our motherboards at precisely the right moment to redirect our browsers... of course that means that they'd have to anticipate this many many years ago to allow for the speed of light and such... but no, thats a real possibility. Or, and I'm going out on a limb here but say with me, maybe - just maybe the same person that registered http://obamadefense.com/ also registered http://www.sarahpalingayrights.com/

Posted by: foxops at August 30, 2008 04:52 PM

From Charles at LGF:

There is apparently no connection between these attack sites and the official Obama campaign; to get to the bottom of it I emailed the owner of an associated site, and here's his reply:

I run ObamaTaxCut.com, or actually alchemytoday.com/obamataxcut

I think the person who registered the domain and forwarded traffic to it also owns/ran ObamaDefense.com -- this used to be a separate site with short defenses of various factually inaccurate charges against Obama during the primary, but the owner changed it to redirect to Obama's site after the campaign made one themselves.

Posted by: Duh at August 30, 2008 04:54 PM

A bit more info:

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://sarahpalingayrights.com

Posted by: Joe Mainusch at August 30, 2008 05:14 PM

So, it's not the "campaign" just "supporters" of the campaign? Well, that clears things up.

Posted by: Capitalist Infidel at August 30, 2008 08:46 PM

If the Whiz Kid has any sense, he'll disavow this immediately.

Posted by: Trish at August 30, 2008 10:57 PM

Trish, longest word in the english language is 'If', and when have you ever saw a career criminal with 'sense'. 'If' they had sense they wouldn't be known as a criminal. Hussein O is a criminal by association from way back and he thinks terrorism is acceptable or he wouldh't have decades as friends and associates with known terrorists. That folks is common sense, not Harvard lawyer BS.

Posted by: Scrapiron at August 31, 2008 12:09 AM

Scarypiron,
1. I would think a career criminal withOUT sense probably wouldnt be a career criminal. But perhaps its values we are talking about - not sense. Like family values that ship jobs overseas - you know, good ol' American values, the Republican way.

2. Who is Hussein O.? Is this your propagation of racist / hatred undertones to scare people from voting for Obama? How Republican! way to go.

3. Not sure what you mean by "criminal by association" but have you looked lately at the convicted felons your idols Bush, Cheney and McCain call friends? If we start at Watergate and end with Spygate (or with Ted Stevens) and put all the Ken Lays in between, I think your side will lose big - especially when it comes to crimes responsible for destroying people.

cheers!

Posted by: wage slave at August 31, 2008 12:38 PM

"Otherwise you prove yourself to be an idiot, and an arrogant idiot at that."

I'm not the one leaping to grand conclusions that are obviously incorrect, Bob.

And, I was referring to IP spoofing to hijack a browser. That should be pretty obvious to even the casual tech observer. Rhetorical semantics aside…

"When IP spoofing is used to hijack a browser, a visitor who types in the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of a legitimate site is taken to a fraudulent Web page created by the hijacker. For example, if the hijacker spoofed the Library of Congress Web site, then any Internet user who typed in the URL www.loc.gov would see spoofed content created by the hijacker."

And, it turns out it was indeed a form of redirection... as suspected.

I was brief for times sake and had no intention of getting into an argument about tech stuff, since the facts were still sketchy and Charles was making inquiries.

But, logic was pretty simple on this one: It was obvious it wasn't the Obama camp because it was too easy to track. They aren’t stupid (think so at your peril) and hide their tracks much better than this. It was pretty obvious this was a form of spoof or redirection. And, that turned out to be the case.

The attacks the Obama camp launch are scattered far and away from their own servers. Anyone who doesn't get that is just playing at detective.

Or worse, parroting others posts with an added twist that includes obvious jumps in logic and mistakes meant to promote the assumption that is incorrect. Charles was VERY clear that it was a developing story, but you folks took it as truth at your own peril.

And that speaks VOLUMES.

Posted by: Duh at August 31, 2008 12:40 PM

wage slave--it's the people without sense who become career criminals in the first place.

Posted by: Trish at August 31, 2008 04:04 PM

Geez, Doesn't it seem like the libpukes are very scared of McCain and Palen now? Looks obvious to me.

Posted by: Tonto (USA) at August 31, 2008 08:08 PM

Hi Tonto. Going on that fear message again? It works - scare the dumbsh*ts into voting Republican. Worked great the last 2 cycles.

Hate, lies and greed - the Republican Way.

Posted by: wage slave at September 1, 2008 09:03 AM