After the Brazillian copying, the hosting outside of the state with their election guru, the numerous questions on data privacy, the changes to the site in response to those questions, tonight Anonymous visited the new FG website and left some dodgy html and visitors received the following message.
Photo thanks to @Darraghdoyle - via Politics.ie
Ah yes all the data is secure and their experts know what they’re doing – well that is what FG have been saying. And some people thought that I was gossiping or something?
Update
The Data Protection Commissioner is now investigating if data submitted by visitors and commenters has ben compromised.
Mr Hawkes has confirmed that he has been contacted by Fine Gael in relation to the attack, as the party suspects that the personal data of those who posted comments or registered their details has been compromised.
Fine Gael has also contacted the Garda Computer Crime Unit in relation to the attack.
Michele Neylon has some interesting questions on the hosting and domain registration
Brian Honan has lots of good points on security and data protection issues.
Stewart has a copy of the email being sent by Fine Gael to people who left details on the website.
Before anyone goes mental, within 9 minutes of it being posted on P.ie, a poster clearly pointed out it was not a hack.
Merely HTML posted as a comment.
All they have done is expose the amateurishness of the site in the first place.
I hope FG get their monies worth in the end.
This is basic stuff and it doesn’t bode well considering they will be in charge of whatever money we have in a few weeks.
Out of interest can people post HTML in your comments Suzy ?
I know its disabled on all my sites.
I’m not sure O_RX but I’m not proposing to be elected to run the country. I’ll check with my gurus
On further investigation it looks like a more sophisticated hack than a cross site scripting attack.
I’m actually quite surprised that an Irish political party would attract this sort of attention.
Crikey, they really can’t do anything without it imploding can they?!
I’d love to know how much money has been invested in the site and in the rest of the stuff that I’m sure is in the pipeline.
@Steph – 40k according to the Mail last Saturday…
@Neil Thanks for that.
40k invested with the right company – of which there are plenty based in Ireland – should have provided them with a secure, professional solution. The mind boggles.
ANONYMOUS and Fine Gael | Machholz's Blog // Jan 10, 2011 at 14:29
[...] A very bad week for Fine Gael [...]
I stand corrected. :/
All the same thought this doesn’t seem malicious at moment.
The second paragraph still stands at moment.
So glad I used Enda@hupmayo.ie now.
They seem to mess up at every stage. One thing I have an issue with is their language. I left a comment which wasn’t positive and yet in the email they called me a supporter and thanked me for my support, neither of which I gave.
Then, in this article they refer to 2,000 “subscribers” http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/republic-of-ireland/fbi-probes-fine-gael-site-hacking-15050566.html … “We were alerted… that the Anonymous Group was able to secure the database of the information submitted by members of the public during the previous week. This affected just under 2,000 subscribers.”
… which, as others have noted, makes me wonder if they know the difference between leaving a comment and subscribing to a mailing list.
Ravi Singh spins around the world // Apr 26, 2011 at 23:48
[...] To be clear he has worked for a US state democratic party Obama campaign in a VERY small way. He was sacked by a gubnertorial campaign for messing up a campaign website. And we remember what happened with the Fine Gael website pre #ge11. [...]
Fine Gael terminate relationship with Ravi Singh // Jun 19, 2011 at 18:21
[...] course regular readers may not be surprised at all by my interest in this turn of events at all at all. (I am permitted a grin here – a [...]