Right wing cyber attacks on Healthcare.gov website confirmed

christiefan915

Catalyst
Thanks for doing the research, Howey.

November 14, 2013

Yesterday, the House Homeland Security Committee published a video on their Youtube page highlighting a portion of the committee questioning Roberta Stempfley, acting assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Cyber-security and Communications, who confirmed at least 16 attacks on the Affordable Care Act’s portal Healthcare.gov website in 2013.

Roberta Stempfley highlighted one successful attack that is designed to deny access to the website called a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. A DDoS attack is designed to make a network unavailable to intended users, generally through a concerted effort to disrupt service such as repeatedly accessing the servers, saturating them with more traffic than the website is designed to handle. Right wingers have been distributing the link to the necessary tools to perform the attacks on the Healthcare.gov website through social networking, as pointed out by Information Week, and other websites . The name of the attack tool is called, "Destroy Obama Care!"

"Destroy Obama Care!", that's the advertised name given to the attack tool by "right wing patriots" who are distributing the DDoS tool through downloads on social networks, which promises to overwhelm the Healthcare.gov website.

"This program continually displays alternate page of the ObamaCare website. It has no virus, Trojans, worms, or cookies. The purpose is to overload the ObamaCare website, to deny service to users and perhaps overload and crash the system," reads the program's grammar- and spelling-challenged "about" screen. "You can open as many copies of this program as you want. Each copy opens multiple links to the site."
"ObamaCare is an affront to the Constitutional rights of the people," it adds. "We have the right to civil disobedience!"

Marc Eisenbarth, research manager at the DDoS defense firm Arbor Networks says that the DDoS attack tool has been used in the past to attack perceived political wrongs.

"This application continues a trend Arbor is seeing with denial-of-service attacks being used as a means of retaliation against a policy, legal rulings or government actions," said Eisenbarth.

Some online news sites have talked about this attack tool being distributed by right wingers, and Congress held hearings this week and talked about the attacks, but there is not one mainstream news organization that seems to be interested. But they all continue to talk about the Healthcare.gov website not working as it should, and if it will be ready by the White House's self imposed deadline of December 1, 2013.

And if you watch the attached video of the questioning of Roberta Stempfley, by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), they both are aware of the attacks, but neither mentions the website attack tool, “Destroy Obama Care!”. The Republican asking the questions obviously has the agenda of attacking the Affordable Care Act as all Republicans do, and it would not be in his best interests to mention that people on his side of the aisle are attacking it. And the DHS did not bring it up for obvious reasons of not wanting to advertise the attack tool.

A link to the attack tool “Destroy Obama Care!” was specifically omitted from this report for the same obvious reasons.

http://www.examiner.com/article/right-wing-cyber-attacks-on-healthcare-gov-website-confirmed
 
Chairman McCaul Questions Witnesses at Hearing on Cybersecurity of Healthcare.gov.


[video=youtube;hmmLwW4w-9o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hmmLwW4w-9o[/video]
 
LOL...I made sure that Christiekins of Pittsburgh was the ID used on every one...:rofl2:

I am We are not amused.

images
 
:rofl2:

Its funny, Obama had his apology speech and not once did he blame the vast Right Wing for his fucked up failure of ObamaCare. If their was any truth to it, he would have blamed them for it, instead its his fuckup and he owns it.


From one of the articles..

Eisenbarth said this DDoS tool most likely can't deliver what it promises. "The request rate, the non-distributed attack architecture and many other limitations make this tool unlikely to succeed in affecting the availability of the healthcare.gov site," he said. Furthermore, he noted that to date, Arbor has seen no "active use of this software."
 
Jeez, I don't even know what that means but you'd better not have done it.

Ask Howie. He'll explain it to you.

In the meantime, let's see what you neglected to mention:

At the moment, “Destroy Obamacare” might be too rudimentary to inflict any major damage on the HealthCare.gov website.

“The request rate, the non-distributed attack architecture and many other limitations make this tool unlikely to succeed in affecting the availability of the healthcare.gov site,” he said, adding that he had not seen any “active use of this software.”

http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/13/hacking-tool-destroy-obamacare-poses-new-threat-to-health-care-website/#ixzz2kxTA6XY7
 
Ask Howie. He'll explain it to you.

In the meantime, let's see what you neglected to mention:

At the moment, “Destroy Obamacare” might be too rudimentary to inflict any major damage on the HealthCare.gov website.

“The request rate, the non-distributed attack architecture and many other limitations make this tool unlikely to succeed in affecting the availability of the healthcare.gov site,” he said, adding that he had not seen any “active use of this software.”

http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/13/hacking-tool-destroy-obamacare-poses-new-threat-to-health-care-website/#ixzz2kxTA6XY7


Wait, what?

Are you saying that if it's too rudimentary NOW, no harm, no foul?
 
Wait, what? Are you saying that if it's too rudimentary NOW, no harm, no foul?

I'm saying there's zero evidence that it wasn't cooked up by lefties desperate to blame Obamas' fuckup on someone else.

Here's another lil' nugget you neglected to mention:


The hacking tool is called "Destroy Obama Care," reports The Wall Street Journal's Danny Yadron, and although it isn't being used yet, security researchers say they have found it available for download and being discussed on several social media networks.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2013/1113/Hacking-tool-threatens-Healthcare.gov-site
 
I'm saying there's zero evidence that it wasn't cooked up by lefties desperate to blame Obamas' fuckup on someone else.

Here's another lil' nugget you neglected to mention:


The hacking tool is called "Destroy Obama Care," reports The Wall Street Journal's Danny Yadron, and although it isn't being used yet, security researchers say they have found it available for download and being discussed on several social media networks.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2013/1113/Hacking-tool-threatens-Healthcare.gov-site

Good article. Pretty funny thinking this is something liberals would do, though.

"Nevertheless, the fact that this tool exists continues a trend of denial-of-service attacks being used to right perceived political or governmental wrongs, the Arbor Networks analysis concluded. The program's documentation seems to argue that the software itself is a legitimate form of protest: it notes, "ObamaCare is an affront to the Constitutional rights of the people. We HAVE the right to CIVIL disobedience!"

It's worth mentioning that this argument likely wouldn't hold up in court: the US Department of Justice and other law enforcement agencies have long argued that DDoS attacks constitute computer crime, not a legitimate act of civil disobedience. In October the DoJ indicted 13 men who, as part of the "hacktivist" collective Anonymous, attacked websites belonging to financial companies and the US government in 2010 and 2011."
 
:rofl2:

Its funny, Obama had his apology speech and not once did he blame the vast Right Wing for his fucked up failure of ObamaCare. If their was any truth to it, he would have blamed them for it, instead its his fuckup and he owns it.

<snip>

If you guys think it's all effed up, why don't you just sit back and watch it collapse? I kinda agree with John Cassidy here.

"When your opponent is digging himself into a hole, an elementary rule of politics states, you should stand aside and let him get on with it. But rather than allowing the American public to reach its own conclusions about the troubled rollout of Obamacare, something many already appear to be doing, and to the President’s cost, Issa and some of his G.O.P. colleagues seem intent on launching another partisan witch hunt, one that demeans both sides and diverts attention from the real issues.

The hearing began with Issa making the legitimate argument that the Obama Administration, in rolling out a deeply flawed healthcare.gov, made a “monumental mistake to go live and effectively explode on the launch pad.” But rather than pursuing the charge of incompetence, one that even the President’s most dogged defenders might have difficulty knocking down, the Californian congressman quickly moved on to accusing two previously anonymous public servants of withholding information, misleading the public, and carrying water for the President and his lackeys.

The dangers in pursuing this strategy immediately became obvious. Neither of the targets of Issa’s questioning—Todd Park, the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Henry Chao, a senior official at the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (C.M.S.), the agency in charge of healthcare.gov—looked anything like political hacks. Two calm and well-spoken Asian-Americans, they appeared to be what they are: non-partisan technology experts who have been working night and day since October 1st to get the insurance exchange working properly."

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blo...-care-hearings-darrell-issa-barack-obama.html
 
Back
Top