Remember, in January, when freshman state Rep. Donna Lichtenegger's Facebook page spat out this oddly blunt message: "I love lobbyist! (sic) All the free food and stuff you get.
This job is awesome!"?
Despite Lichtenegger's swift standard Web-screwup claim of "I was hacked!," it seemed like nothing more than a rookie political gaffe with a weak defense that we could all chuckle about. After all, a tea party favorite bragging on Facebook about lobbyist feedbags is certainly amusing. Well, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that everybody should quit yucking it up, because four representatives, including Lichtenegger, really have had their Facebook accounts hacked in recent weeks. It appears Jeff City is awash with ne'er-do-wells bent on mocking our elected officials. Or one bored guy in the Capitol lobby.
The reason that somebody would want to hack into members' Facebook
accounts just to plant juvenile status updates is unclear, the paper reports. The hackers, who have hit three Republicans, one Democrat and a Republican aide, don't appear to have done anything more malicious than post moronic-sounding posts about
lobbyists. Another freshman Republican representative, Dave Schatz of
Sullivan, tells the paper that his account was hijacked three weeks ago,
and a message similar to Lichtenegger's appeard on his page. He wisely
kept the news to himself, sparing him the treatment that Lichtenegger got on
political and news blogs statewide.
But if the reason for breaking into the accounts seems to be nothing more
than mischief, the snarky hackers' methods of logging
into lawmakers' Facebook pages appear to be numerous. The Post-Dispatch suggests three:
First, members of the House of Representatives use the Capitol's free
public Wi-Fi for all of their work because they don't know how to log
in to the secure network they're supposed to be using. From the paper:
In all of the cases in which Facebook accounts were accessedin
the House, the owners of the accounts had used the House public
Wi-Fi network. Some legislators said they use the public wireless
Internet nearly exclusively, and some said they don't know how to
access the secure Internet network for legislators.
The public Wi-Fi, the paper reports, isn't monitored for security
concerns.
But it might not be the unprotected network's fault that politicians are
getting hacked, the paper says. Frequently, their passwords are just
plain easy to guess. James Lewis, a researcher with the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, tells the paper, "It's worth
trying to figure out if this was a wireless problem
or a password problem." So, legislators, if your password is GOP123 or MoDem#1, it would be a good idea to change it up.
Finally, the wide availability of free hacker software
is probably helping the cyber jerks access the accounts. Specifically,
a program called Firesheep has been raising hell on legislative
networks around the country. The program is geared toward less than tech-savvy creeps hoping
to glean private information over a wireless network. An Arizona-based
network expert described it to the Post-Dispatch as, "[O]ne of
those things that scared the hell out of us
with getting into people's Facebook and grabbing passwords." So,
basically, even if you're a House rep and you have a super-sneaky
password but use the House's public network, hackers are still going to make you look like an idiot.
The irony of the House's trouble with hackers is that on the other side of the building, in the Senate, there hasn't been a single case of hackers posting annoying messages on senators' pages. The reason? The Senate's private and public networks
are both monitored for security breaches.The moral of the story for the House of Representative seems pretty basic: Learn how to log in to the secure network!
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