Ron Paul campaign sending spambot email?
By Ema Kwiatkowski
According to computer-security researchers who’ve analyzed a recent flurry of e-mail supporting the long-shot Republican candidate, his campaign is getting support from an illegal, globe-spanning network of spam-spewing robots.
"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 at Birmingham’s director of research in computer forensics. He was referring to a wave of pro-Paul e-mails that flooded the Internet after the Republican presidential debate on Oct. 21.
The e-mails carried subject lines such as "Who Is Ron Paul?" and "Ron Paul Wins GOP Debate!"
Warner told Wired News his lab traced the e-mails back to servers in Asia, Africa, South America and Europe — giving evidence that whoever sent them may have used a botnet, or world-wide network of hijacked computers, to pump out massive volumes of spam campaign solicitations.
The headers of the emails were pretty fishy. One e-mail, designed to look as if it came from within a major Silicon Valley corporation, was actually sent from a computer in South Korea. Another e-mail that was designed to look as if it came from Houston was sent from Italy.
Critics in the online political world have often grumbled suspicions of Paul’s technically sophisticated fan base manipulating online tools and polls to falsely indicate of a wide base of support. Despite his relatively poor performance in offline polling, Paul’s large 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. Some GOP sites have disabled their online polls, because they suspected that they were being purposefully inflated by Ron Paul supporters. But the recent University analysis is the first to document any of these tricks.
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.
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Read more entries by Ema Kwiatkowski.
Stumble It!
November 1st, 2007
Ron Paul’s online support is real, perhaps this spam attack was a campaign to capitalize on the success of Ron Paul on the internet. All of the techno jargon is beyond my ken, but there are easily millions of hardcore Ron Paul supporters on line, so assuming that Ron Pauls entire internet success is the result of some sort of super bug doesn’t seem plausible as many other explainations.
There is some evidene that this story is a false plant orginating in the Guiliani camp. I do not know if this is true, or not, but who knows?
Certainly Ron Paul does not benefit from a spam campaign so perhaps its best to question who does.
November 1st, 2007
This has already been linked to Rudy Guiliani’s camp as a smear campaign.
How come Ron Paul is number three in fund raising for all Presidential campaigns but you can relate that to his popularity?
What mainstream media source owns you?
November 1st, 2007
Dear Ema and T-B.com,
Hire a fact checker:
Wired Magazine Clarification – “This article has been modified to clarify that Warner has seen no evidence suggesting that the Paul campaign is responsible for the spam.”
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/10/paul_bot
November 1st, 2007
Mr. President: Mr Paul!
November 1st, 2007
Mr. President: Mr. Paul!
November 1st, 2007
Ron 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.
http://www.nolanchart.com/article259.html
November 1st, 2007
This what I know :
Gary Warner of UAB is alive and well. This is a quote from his blog today,”How many people do I think were behind the Ron Paul spam? One. And not one that is officially recognized in any capacity by the Ron Paul campaign.” http://garwarner.blogspot.com/
As for the YouTube Video claiming the Rudy Camp is behind this : http://www.rudygiulianiforum.com does exist. It was registered on 04/07/07 through GoDaddy.com by a company called “Domain by Proxy Inc.” Who actually owns the site, I don’t know. It seems they are in the Business of providing a front for actual domain owners. Some suggest Dr. Paul supporters others Mitt Romney supporters. I can’t say for sure. I do know the “string” has been reposted on the site by other users who claim to actually know Sarah Lai Stirland from there. Decide for yourself.
In complete fairness to Sarah, one should “google” the young lady and look at her body of work. Her poor journalism is not limited to Dr. Paul . I suspect she is really a supporter of the DNC and not Rudy at all. I urge Dr. Paul supporters to communicate w/ Gary Warner of UAB and thank him for his honesty on this subject (Contrary to what Sarah has written). He has promised more “ammo” for Dr. Paul supporters who pay him a visit. Also feel free to visit Sarah Stirland on her site by the same name dot com. I wonder how she feels about the Ron Paul internet presence now? Hope this has helped.
November 2nd, 2007
Get your facts straight. Paul has more supporters than the mainstream media is willing to admit so they’re pulling all the polls. Talk about having a political agenda!
November 3rd, 2007
I 100% believe it was from the Giuliana Forum and Sarah Stirland as this video shows.
Did a Giuliani Supporter do it to discredit Ron Paul. Why is the first place to pick up the story after wired was Fox?
Video evidence it was from a Giuliani forumn a setup that Sarah Lei Striland was paid to write to discredit the RP supporters as only internet.
http://www.youtube.com/v/U5LgUiz2mBA
Wired has already retracted / corrected the story.
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Fox news caught openly discussing censcuring ron paul before the Sept 27th debate and they were pulling out all the stops to prove the text messages were “rigged”
They are lost credibility big time and are stricking back.
Fox caught censuring.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnQCfJrYuJM
November 5th, 2007
Disproven lies. Ron Paul hit piece. Good job licking the boots of your MSM and complex masters.
http://www.youtube.com/v/U5LgUiz2mBA
November 6th, 2007
Are these the same “spambots” that live in the Diebold voting machines?