http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2008/11/hoax_voting_e-mail_targets_geo.html

Hoax voting e-mail targets George Mason University community, FBI Investigating.

It appears someone hacked into George Mason University's e-mail system late last night and sent out a hoax message intending to deter the Northern Virginia school's voters from going to the polls today.

The short message, which looked as if it came from the office of Provost Peter N. Stearns, was addressed to the Mason Community at large: "Please note that election day has been moved to November 5th. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you."

George Mason officials said this morning that the message went to approximately 35,000 people at the school's three campuses in Fairfax, Arlington and Prince William County, including about 30,000 students and 5,000 employees. University officials do not know who is responsible for the hack but said GMU is working with University police and the FBI to determine the source.

Doesn't look like they so much "hacked in" as they got GMU's 'private' listserve addresses.


the e-mail headers were:


Received: from m154.prod.democracyinaction.org ([8.15.20.154])
by ironport2.gmu.edu with ESMTP; Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:16:42 -0500
Received: from [10.15.20.114] ([10.15.20.114:39637] helo=web4.mcl.wiredforchange.com)

First, who would be stupid enough to believe it? Especially college students who have probably been given all sorts of information about how to obtain absentee ballots from their home states, what is required to register, etc.

Second, who is dumb enough to believe that people would believe it?

Third, is it worth getting charged with election fraud, tampering with a computer network, and all sorts of other computer hacking crimes?

I hope the idiot who did this ends up spending a few years trying to impress his skinhead cell mate.

Bob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> First, who would be stupid enough to believe it?

This is GMU, not UVA.

> Especially college students who have probably been
> given all sorts of information about how to obtain
> absentee ballots from their home states, what is
> required to register, etc.

See above.

>
> Second, who is dumb enough to believe that people
> would believe it?
>

Probably a GMU grad.

> Third, is it worth getting charged with election
> fraud, tampering with a computer network, and all
> sorts of other computer hacking crimes?
>

This is a pretty common occurrence with Republicans in Virginia, for some reason.

> I hope the idiot who did this ends up spending a
> few years trying to impress his skinhead cell
> mate.

Joe the Cummer?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/04/2008 10:27PM by WashingToneLocian.

I would like to know how they did it so I can change some of my grades.

X4vPK Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I would like to know how they did it so I can
> change some of my grades.

They probably just spoofed the email address and had the distro from a previous email. I wonder if the person realized it was going to be voter fraud and a shit load of other federal crimes.

If the person is smart he\she will turn themselves in before the FBI does the leg work and uses man hours.

I would think that the judge might go easy if it was a student who turns themselves in.

Lurker. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> They probably just spoofed the email address and
> had the distro from a previous email. I wonder if
> the person realized it was going to be voter fraud
> and a shit load of other federal crimes.
>
> If the person is smart he\she will turn themselves
> in before the FBI does the leg work and uses man
> hours.
>
> I would think that the judge might go easy if it
> was a student who turns themselves in.


You're right. If the person comes forward right away and says "You know, I just thought I was being funny, I didn't think anyone would take it seriously," they'd probably give him a big fine and lots of community service hours.

Once they invest themselves and their time and energy into hunting him/her down, they're going to want something to show for all their effort, like a press conference, a big trial with whatever media attention they can get, and some jail time.

And if the person is stupid enough to jerk them around when they finally catch up with him/her, they're really going to put the screws to him/her.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/05/2008 10:49PM by Bob.

E-mail spoofing is easy with lazy admins at the helm. they probably left the exchange or whatever mail server they use set up to blacklist eligible accounts to send-as that address, instead of whitelisting only a limited user list. They probably got an order from some non-IT adminsitrator saying they needed to make it easy for anyone they need to be able to send-as that account, and they decided that just letting everyone have it would be on the safe side of that order (but the safe side of security, clearly).

Any good admin would block all but a few key users from having send-as to ANY public info-only list like that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/06/2008 01:20AM by RESton Peace.

LOL Reston. Or maybe it is as easy as they have relaying enabled LOL

Who the hell cares, if people are stupid enough to believe that email they should not be voting in the first place, kind of like Obama's supporters I guess.

steve k Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Who the hell cares, if people are stupid enough to
> believe that email they should not be voting in
> the first place, kind of like Obama's supporters I
> guess.


or Sarah Palin who did not know Africa was a continent

Who even cares about Africa. I couldn't even think of one country in Africa. It's not on my list of places to visit. Let me check my list of "Third World Shit Hole Countries" to visit.

Cp Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I couldn't even
> think of one country in Africa.


And thats why you voted for Palin. High-five

X4vPK Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I would like to know how they did it so I can
> change some of my grades.


if you go to GMU, you can get a full list of everyone's email address with ease because the admins are too fucking stupid to secure their servers. you wouldnt believe the shit i found just poking around their server. just login to the server that you can post your web page on using ssh. this will take you to your home directly if you go up one directory you can list all the directories which are (e.g. mwalbur2 so their email address would be mwalbur2@gmu.edu). their are about 4 or 5 different directories with home directories so you should go up another directory and go into the other ones and list them. if you check the permissions, you can see which idiots left their permissions completely open to everyone and store whatever you want in their account. ;)

i hope by now they have fixed this but again, their admins are stupid, REALLY stupid.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

I have an idea. Lets get rid of computers. They just put more stress on people, and contribute to youth obesity.

Gravis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> X4vPK Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I would like to know how they did it so I can
> > change some of my grades.
>
>
> if you go to GMU, you can get a full list of
> everyone's email address with ease because the
> admins are too fucking stupid to secure their
> servers. you wouldnt believe the shit i found
> just poking around their server. just login to
> the server that you can post your web page on
> using ssh. this will take you to your home
> directly if you go up one directory you can list
> all the directories which are (e.g. mwalbur2 so
> their email address would be mwalbur2@gmu.edu).
> their are about 4 or 5 different directories with
> home directories so you should go up another
> directory and go into the other ones and list
> them. if you check the permissions, you can see
> which idiots left their permissions completely
> open to everyone and store whatever you want in
> their account. ;)
>
> i hope by now they have fixed this but again,
> their admins are stupid, REALLY stupid.

I can't believe they don't have DIR_MODE=0750 in etc/adduser.conf

Or set the UMASK for /home to 0750 or even 0711

resident Wrote:
> or Sarah Palin who did not know Africa was a
> continent

or Barrack Obama visiting the 57 states............

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is an international organisation with a permanent delegation to the United Nations. It groups 57 member states, from the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, Caucasus, Balkans, Southeast Asia, South Asia and South America. The official languages of the organisation are Arabic, English and French.

Reston Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> resident Wrote:
> > or Sarah Palin who did not know Africa was a
> > continent
>
> or Barrack Obama visiting the 57
> states............
>
>

Are you marv117 on digg.com? He's been running around posting that Obama visited 57 states all over digg.com for days now.

There is a huge difference between not knowing that Africa is a continent, or who the signatories of NAFTA are, and making a mistake while giving a speech.

Do you honestly think that Obama thinks there are 57 states? He was born in the 50th state and went to elementary and high school there, and I went to elementary school there as well,in third grade they teach you that it was the last of the 50 states to become a state in 1959.

You don't ever make a mistake when talking? You've never slipped up and said something wrong, even though you actually knew the right answer?

To keep hounding on a slip up made 6 months ago is really quite pathetic. If that is the worst you can find about Obama, if that is how deep you have to dig to find something negative, you really are desperate and grasping at straws.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2008 11:52PM by Bob.

A mass-mail sent by the admins


Early in the morning of November 4th, the university’s central
announcement system sent an email from the Provost to members of the
university community negating two rumors about the national election
that had been circulating on campus. Someone used this opportunity to
utilize a form on an outside web server to “spoof” the email address of
the account authorized to send to the announcement list. Using this
form, the person then sent a message purporting to be from the Provost
that stated that the date of the election had been moved to November 5th.

While it is simple to spoof an address, the information contained in the
header of the message revealed the true path of the message, clearly
indicating it did not originate with the Provost or from any university
system. The company that owns the outside web server has disabled the
form on its site that allowed the person to send this spoofed message.

Since tampering with elections is a Federal offense, the cybercrime
expert in Campus Police was notified and he immediately contacted his
counterpart in the FBI. The FBI is now investigating.

The sender was able to send the message via the central list because the
sender took action while the system was still delivering the original
message and so the names of recipients had not yet been cleared out of
the announcement database.

In order to avoid future incidents of this type, a manual verification
step has been added to the central process to send announcements. All of
the university’s central announcement lists will be subject to the new
verification process, thus eliminating the potential for a spoofed
message to be sent via a central announcement list.

"The sender was able to send the message via the central list because the
sender took action while the system was still delivering the original
message and so the names of recipients had not yet been cleared out of
the announcement database."

It doesn't say it wasn't a George Mason student or admin. It just says the domain name used was from outside of George Mason. A person still needed to know how to format the email to look like a Mason email. The only people who know that would be Mason people.

"Doesn't look like they so much "hacked in" as they got GMU's 'private' listserve addresses.

the e-mail headers were:

Received: from m154.prod.democracyinaction.org ([8.15.20.154])
by ironport2.gmu.edu with ESMTP; Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:16:42 -0500
Received: from [10.15.20.114] ([10.15.20.114:39637] helo=web4.mcl.wiredforchange.com)"


Very interesting re: email headers. I've recently been studying this incident for school (not GMU). Most comments seem to imply that the intent of this hoax was to deter people from voting for Barak Obama in 2008. However, the headers suggest that the email originated with a progressive/Democrat PAC organization if info above is correct (democracyinaction.org & wiredforchange). Why would they do that?

What was their motivation? Did anyone ever get to the bottom of this?