Wednesday afternoon, Norm Coleman’s attorney, Fritz Knaak, officially responded to news that Wikileaks.org had posted information indicating that sensitive data about Coleman donors has been exposed. Following a press release by Wikileaks.org earlier in the day, which…
Donors to Norm Coleman responded to news of a campaign data breach with “extreme anger,” worry about their credit card accounts, and suspicion of the Al Franken campaign. Here is a sample of what Coleman campaign contributors are saying.
Norm Coleman’s campaign sent e-mails to donors today about the campaign contributor database posted at Wikileaks.org. The message, sent “out of an abundance of caution,” encourages concerned contributors to cancel their credit cards, but offers no apology for exposing donor details including full credit card numbers, accompanying three-digit security codes and home addresses.
Former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign spokesman Cullen Sheehan suggests that the publication of a campaign donor database on Wikileaks.org is the work of politically motivated individuals who have “found a way to breach private and confidential information” and may be a “political dirty trick.” MinnPost’s Joe Kimball echoes the sentiment, attributing the discovery of the unprotected database to “some hackers.” But according to the IT professional who first called attention to the exposed donor database, the site wasn’t hacked at all.
A database of contributors to former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman has been released via the Web site Wikileaks.org. What is Wikileaks?
In late January, allegations were leveled that former Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign faked the crash of its website, claiming droves of disenfranchised voters brought down the server seeking info on whether their votes were counted. While that charge hasn’t been definitively proven, the scrutiny by web enthusiasts exposed a bigger problem for the campaign: an unprotected database that contained information on campaign donors, including names, email and home addresses, credit card numbers and the three-digit security codes. On Tuesday, donors received an email from the website Wikileaks alerting them that the site has revealed some of the database information.
Norm Coleman’s staffers have still not responded to my queries about their disputed claim that the former senator’s Web site crashed due to a traffic spike, but one thing’s for certain: While the site is up and running again, it appears to be severely under-secured. One IT professional tells me that the campaign has stored a database of campaign donors (complete with names, email addresses, phone numbers and donation amounts) in a publicly accessible, unprotected directory.
UPDATED: Former Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign Web site is down, and the campaign explains that it was “inundated by tens of thousands of hits” by visitors seeking details on “Al Franken’s efforts to disenfranchise thousands of Minnesota voters.” But liberal blogger and IT manager Aaron Landry doesn’t buy it. His conclusion: “This stunt is a completely fabricated lie.”
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