Coleman posts credit card numbers online, doesn't warn donors, and then blames hackers [View All]

[WI_DEM]

(this guy is a putz)

Norm Coleman’s campaign spokesman Cullen Sheehan suggested in an e-mail sent to supporters this morning that Wikileaks.org’s publication of the campaign’s donor database — including donors’ credit card numbers and the three-digit security codes for those cards — is the work of politically motivated people who have “found a way to breach private and confidential information.”

Sheehan hinted that the leak might be a work of political sabotage: “We don’t know if last evening’s e-mail is a political dirty trick or what the objective is of the person who sent the e-mail.”

MinnPost’s Joe Kimball echoed Sheehan’s notion that the database was hacked, writing this morning that “some hackers (Web enthusiasts, calls them), apparently discovered that list.”

But the database was not revealed by hackers, according to IT professional Adria Richards, who was the first to share news of the unprotected file in late January.

“It’s not hacking,” she said. “I didn’t use any hacking tools. A browser was my tool.”

Richards said she discovered the database by entering normcoleman.com, into OpenDNS’ cache-check tool, which gave her an IP address where the Web site lived.

Simply copying that address into a Firefox browser revealed the Web site directories for colemanforsenate.com.

Richards didn’t download the database herself, but she posted a screen capture of what she’d found online after she made the discovery. An IT consultant for 10 years, she published her findings on her blog to educate others about the risks of improperly managed websites, she said.

http://minnesotaindependent.com/28748/colemans-site-wasnt-hacked-says-it-pro-who-discovered-donor-breach

www.dailykos.com