Hacker redirects Obama's Web site to Clinton's

Updated 10 a.m. PDT Tuesday with comment from "Mox."

Someone exploited a weakness in Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama's Web site and redirected visitors to rival Hillary Clinton's site over the weekend, according to a posting on the blog of security firm NetCraft.

Basically, visitors to the community blogs section of Obama's site on Saturday night were sent to Clinton's site. Someone using the alias "Mox" claimed credit for the hack on Obama's site late on Sunday.

The writer downplayed the act, saying: "All I did was exploit some poorly written HTML code." Basically, the hack was possible because of a cross-site scripting vulnerability, which is a common hole in Web sites.

A YouTube user named "Zennie62" posted a video clip showing him being redirected from Obama's site to Clinton's.

The redirect has been fixed, but "Mox" says similar vulnerabilities remain on the site.

An e-mail sent to CNET News.com late on Monday from "mox xss" said: "this exploit was not at all politically motivated, and it was simply an immature prank meant purely for fun. Senator Clinton had no hand whatsoever."

Purported hacker says other vulnerabilities exist on Obama's Web site.

(Credit: Netcraft)

[Pete Bardo]

That's a real confidence booster!

Whether it was due to a lack of understanding on the candidate's part, or a lack of judgment in hiring the web site designer, this does nothing to raise my confidence level in this candidate. If his web site isn't secure, .....

I'm left wondering if the same thing is possible on the other candidates' sites.

Disclosure: I'm Libertarian. I probably wouldn't trust any of the Republican or Democrat candidates anyway.

[cidman2001]

Well......

I'm not sure porrly written code reflects on the candidate or not. That could be a stretch...unless you're Sean Hannity. As an independent, I'm with you on the trust level of either party. I still think that a McCain/Lieberman ticket would be interesting to say the least.

[Hernys]

It actually speaks even worse of the alternatives

Barack Obama didn't achieve perfect security on his web site. Bad, but not as bad when you consider 90% of web sites are not secure either.
Now, his opponents in the presidential race apparently are dishonest enough to deface his site (either them or their supporters). That's much, much worse.

[BHCS]

Confidence...

Well the best is yet to come. Just wait to see what happens to whoever's elected. Will then keep the IT staff that lost several years of White House/RNC emails or will dump em for someone with some creds. Incidentally, Dr P's site has been hacked too, so don't get too holier than thou.

[close5828]

I thought it was pretty funny.

Perhaps there was nothing "political" about this but it was more of a practical joke?

I think some ppl are reading way too far into this than they should.

Viva Independents! :-D

[mshidden]

Hilary?s is always putting words in his mouth!

Now the big question is how funny is that.

[likes2comment]

Better than Obama putting it

in Hillary's mouth