WHID 2009-35: Former US Senator Donors Information Leaks

Updated: 
17 March 2009
Attack Information
WHID ID: 
2009-35
Date Occured: 
11 Mar 2009
Attack Method: 
Attack Method: 
Outcome Information
Target Information
Attacked Entity Field: 
Politics
Attacked Entity Geography: 
USA

Norm Coleman, a former senator from Minnesota, is going through a legal battle to try to win back his seat in the senate. If the way he manages his web site security and the crises it created are an indicator, I am not sure that he has a place there.

The Coleman team called in the US Secret Service to investigate the leak in which sensitive information about more than 4700 donors was published on Wikileaks, a web site devoted to such exposures. Coleman himself called the incident "an obviously an attack on my campaign".

However the Minnesota Independent reveals that the information was exposed for anyone to view on the senator's web site since at least January 28th. Hardly an attack. At the time the site was suffering performance issues and in a debate about the cause somebody commented to an Independent about the an exposed database, which the Independent was fast to report on. Moreover, Wikileaks took the trouble to inform the people in the list that their information leaked, while it took the Senator team over a month to react.