Oct 30, 2008 11:59 pm US/Pacific
Anti-Proposition 8 Campaign Says Web Site Hacked
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ―
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Same-sex couple Ariel Owens and his spouse Joseph Barham walk arm in arm after they were married at San Francisco City Hall June 17, 2008, in San Francisco.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Gay marriage supporters said Thursday they were victims of a sophisticated cyber attack that briefly crashed a Web site central to their fundraising efforts to defeat a ballot initiative that would outlaw same-sex weddings.
Campaign officials said the No on Proposition 8 Web site was the target of so-called denial-of-service attacks Wednesday night. Such an attack involves many computers targeting a single online network, causing users and customers to experience error messages.
"They struck at the heart of our campaign," said campaign director Patrick Guerriero. "It was shocking and disturbing."
Guerriero said campaign officials contacted the FBI and Secret Service. An FBI spokesman didn't return calls and a Secret Service spokesman said the agency doesn't comment on potentially open investigations.
The Web site was operating normally Thursday morning after technicians spent the night fixing the problem.
A spokesman for the campaign supporting a gay marriage ban said that group had nothing to do with the Web site troubles.
"I don't know if it even was intentional," said Yes on 8 spokesman Chip White. "Our site has suffered outages from high traffic."
White said the Yes on 8's Web site crashed briefly on Wednesday morning.
"We didn't accuse anyone," he said.
No on 8 officials said they are certain they were targeted from several locations in California, Texas, New Jersey and Georgia. They said the attack started slowly Wednesday afternoon and technicians were able to effectively block several Internet Protocol addresses, known as IP addresses, that are a computer's digital fingerprint. But by 10 p.m. Wednesday, campaign officials said the site was under attack from so many IP addresses simultaneously that it crashed.
Blocking this type of Web assault is difficult or impossible because the host server has no way of distinguishing between legitimate and bogus requests for access.
Denial of service attacks have increased in recent years and have targeted a range of groups and individuals, including the Estonian government and a 2006 campaign site of Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman.
Proposition 8 is the most hotly contested initiative on the California ballot Tuesday. It would rewrite the California Constitution to ban gay marriage.
Fundraising for both sides is nearing $60 million, making it the costliest proposition on the ballot this year.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
California's 1st Same-Sex Marriage
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