Wired magazine: Researchers say 'criminal botnet' is behind Ron Paul's Web support

[wyldwolf]

Computer-security researchers believe "a global network of hacked PCs spewing spam" is behind the strong support that Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul has on the Internet if he's judged by blog postings, online poll results and mentions in social-networking sites, Wired magazine reports.

The activity, which the candidate's campaign says it is unaware of, "is clearly a criminal act," Gary Warner, the University of Alabama at Birmingham's director of research in computer forensics, tells Wired. Warner, according to Wired, "says that he has no reason to believe that the Paul campaign had anything to do" with the online activity.

Wired writes that:

The spamming allegations are based on a slew of e-mails captured by contributors to the university's Spam Data Mining for Law Enforcement Applications project, a research venture that receives 2.5 million spam messages a day, and selects about 100,000 a week for analysis. The project receives its spam from other researchers with ties to ISPs, and in some cases from "trap" addresses that have never been used for any other purpose.

They were received by the lab following the latest televised Republican debate ... and had 16 different subject lines, including "Ron Paul Wins GOP Debate! HMzjoqO" and "Ron Paul Exposes Federal Reserve! SBHBcSO." The random string of characters at the end is a common spammer's technique to circumvent bulk e-mail filtering.

The spam went to "several hundred" e-mail addresses harvested for the university project, says Warner.

The e-mails had phony names attached to real-looking e-mail addresses. When lab researchers examined the IP addresses of the computers from which the messages had been sent, it turned out that they were sprinkled around the globe in countries as far away from each other as South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, Nigeria and Brazil.

Paul, who Tuesday night told Jay Leno that he thinks he just might win the race for the White House, has the support of about 1.9% of Republicans nationally, according to Pollster.com's analysis of scientific surveys done by polling firms.

(USA Today and Wired Magazine)

http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/11/wired-magazine-.html#more

[MH1]

1. But why?

Criminals do things for money. If the Paul campaign isn't behind it (and it seems there's no evidence that they are) then who, and why?

I certainly think it's technically feasible and was only a matter of time.

[wyldwolf]

2. well, putting on the largest of tin foil hats...

... the countries the spam is originating from would benefit from a Paul presidency? :shrug:

[gorekerrydreamticket]

3. Paul has some very fanatic supporters. No doubt a few of them are computer geeks.

I'm guessing.