Whoever put together McCain's Myspace page also grabbed the images from Mike Davidson's server, so every time someone visited John McCain's Myspace page, it cost Mike bandwith, which isn't free.

Mike's a good-natured guy and is fairly apolitical - this was just his way of making his point... he could have done much worse but that's not his style.

(And just for the record, this isn't a hack in the sense that most people think of the word)

But McCain has said that he supports at least once in the past.

Calling this "hacking" strikes me as slanderous. All Davidson did was replace his own images, which McCain's people had no business hotlinking to.

Of course, journalists don't understand any more about how the web works than politicians do, so no doubt "McCain's page hacked" will continue to be the standard way to refer to this incident.

This wasn't a hack in ANY sense of the word, and for ABC News to characterize it as such is irresponsible journalism. Jennifer Parker ought to be ashamed of herself. Davidson simply changed an image file on his own server that was being stolen by the McCain campaign. Jennifer Parker and ABC News owe Mr. Davidson an apology and retraction.

The title of this is completely misleading. It seems like the McCain campaign was doing something more along the lines of 'hacking'. Another example of flimsy news hype.

I am actually ok with the characterization of this as a "hack" because a "hack", in the general sense of the word means "to change something so that it achieves a purpose it wasn't previously achieving". Only modern parlance tends to equate "hacking" with actually committing an illegal act.

If I modify the exhaust pipe of my car so that it makes a loud noise when I drive by, that's a "car hack" (albeit a totally annoying one).

"webblog?"

I declare irony.

I think it's hilarius that this bobble head politician actually made a myspace page! Guess he'll be competing with my teenage daughter for coolness points.:rolleyes:

It definitely isn't a hack, it's much, much cooler. McCain's web guys (who I'd imagine dress in all black judging by their gloomy campaign site) have egg on their faces now -- for using the design without attribution, and for compounding that by stealing the designer's bandwidth. Gotcha.

It's not a hack. Why don't you investigate before you report.

MD should send JM a bill for his bandwidth abuse.

I've played the same trick on hotlinkers before.

The only "hack"s in this story are John McCain, Matt Drudge, and any news agency that labels this a "hack".

Just shows how little grasp so many have of teh internets, also to what lengths people like Drudge go to, to smear.

first i've heard of this mike character... i admire his style. its a harmless way to prove his point. i know nothing about computers, but i agree with who-ever said that it isn't TECHNICALLY a hack.

Typical leftist media laziness. Those left-wing media outlets, such as ABC News, are stuffed to the gills with tech-ignorant fools who wouldn't know a hack from a hardware website.

At least, that's the charitable thing to assume. It is in their nature to attack what they do not understand, as they do to the Three C's:

Christians, Conservatives, and Common Sense,

every single day.

Leftist lunacy must stop!!!

This is not a hack, this is abuse on behalf of the John McCain campaign for "image leeching" from Mr. Davidson's web server. This the equivalent of buying a drink for every single person at a bar and putting it on someone else's tab.

Effectively, Mr. Davidson was forced into monetary contribution to the McCain campaign in the form of bandwidth costs.

HACK: Intransitive verb. ] use a computer to gain unauthorized access to data in a system : they hacked into a bank's computer. HACK: [ transitive verb. ] gain unauthorized access to (data in a computer) : hacking private information from computers.

This report is just another poor attempt at what some call journalism.
Didn't even get the real facts. Just like watching ABC news or any prime time news for that matter.

Mike Davidson actually called it the "immaculate hack," so I suppose it is a "hack" of sorts. However, the article implies Mike did something wrong, and completely leaves out the bandwidth issue, which is McCain's real sin here.

Totally within the rights of the image host being charged for traffic to McCain's site to alter the image in any manner he sees fit.

Journalists (and Drudge) like flashy headlines, but this is plain misleading.

To repeat what others have said, this is NOT hacking. Correct your article, ABC.

It's a hack.

Hack n.
1. A clever or elegant technical accomplishment, especially one with a playful or prankish bent.

From the Urban Dictionary.

And it's used that way a lot. I don't care if you don't use it that way... don't tell someone that they're using it wrong just because you don't understand the sense in which it's being used.

-fred

These days a politician needs to be technology savvy in order to reach out to the masses. Mike did a clever trick to expose the fact that John McCain has a MySpace identity conflict when it comes to gay marriage. Sort of reminds me of another politician....

"Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps." -GWB

We can only hope the news media will get this straight. This was straight-up justice, has no shade of anything illegal whatsoever.

Do they put cyber-terrorists in gitmo, or do they have a special place just for them?

For Jennifer Parker to use statements such as "new weapon in campaign digital media warfare", "McCain didn't give him credit and Davidson sought retribution" and terms such as "Internet battlefield" just go to show that the mainstream media are irresponsible, do no research, and report solely to generate maximum hype. If Ms. Parker had done one shred of research she would know that this was not a traditional "hack" (McCain's MySpace page was not broken into), and that the image was replaced solely as a prank to show McCain's people that they were in fact in the wrong and were stealing bandwidth from Mike. Yet another example of the sensationalism rampant in the modern mainstream media. Thanks ABC News, for getting your misinformation straight.

I am an IT professional with some 12 years experience working on the World Wide Web. Recently, my grown daughters shamed me into participation in MySpace, which both of them use, as well as my grandsons. The competing characterizations of this incident as a "hack" or as "stealing bandwidth" are both absurd. Newsvine, by providing access to templates for public use, implicitly accepts the use of its bandwidth. McCain's campaign, by pasting code into their MySpace page, should have recognized that the graphics referenced were outside of their control. They apparently were able to read the code sufficiently to remove the attribution to which the author rightfully felt entitled. ABC should have been reporting on the incompetence of McCain's staff.

Yeah--what's with the reference to the de Vellis '1984' ad? As this little prank wasn't politically motivated, it's inclusion is laughable. Too bad the author of this blog didn't grasp what was happening here...

The article says, "This just goes to show that the Internet is an entirely new battlefield for many of these candidates and they are going to have to develop sophisticated new responses to deal with them," said Rasiej.

No. I think, rather, what it shows is that what candidates need to develop is a clue as to how the internet works and how you're supposed to behave when you use it. Giving credit to someone who deserves it and requests it is not a "sophisticated response" on a "new battlefield." It's just the manners his mama should have taught him.

sorry, but the title of this article needs to be changed. No "hacking" was performed here.

That what they get for *stealing bandwith* serves them right!!!

Quote
"Davidson claims that he designed the MySpace template that McCain is using and usually lets anyone use it for free as long as they give attribution.

However, apparently McCain didn't give him credit and Davidson sought retribution. "
Jennifer Parker should learn how to report correctly instead of spreading the FALSE information. This is why we, the people, don't believe your news report.
1. McCain myspace takes the template from Mike without giving him credit.
2. McCain myspace links to the image on Mike's server that costs him bandwidth/money every time someone come to McCain myspace.
3.Mike changed the image on Mike's server. Read Mike's server, not Mccain's server. Therefore, no hacks were involved.

It is because of misleading story like this that people lose trust in the news.
And for fred with the urban dictionary, if you call changing picture on your own server is hacking then you are so computer illiterate.
On a side note, here is a definition from webster
hack:
4 a : to write computer programs for enjoyment b : to gain access to a computer illegally

Not a hack! Not even remotely a hack. Did you even read the bit by the fellow claiming responsibility for the incident? The McCain camp--more specifically their web consultants--did two things that were morally wrong, one of which was stealing an image hundreds or thousands of times a day from someone else's site without that someone's permission. So that someone else switched the image, and McCain's people didn't realize the switch had been made for a few hours, during which time they continued to steal it and give it to visitors.

Calling this a hack is insane. If anything you should call out McCain for stealing his image and bandwidth as well as using his template without giving credit. I guess you have to spin it somehow though, right?

Do some research before writing.

Jenny, you loving idiot. McCain's people are thieves and Davidson merely adjusted his "own" website to reveal that to the world.
Why don't you do an article on Internet etiquette and the very real monetary cost of bandwidth, which McCain's people were stealing?
So far as I can tell, not one of his staff contacted Mr. Davidson to apologize.

This was NOT hacking. The "OWNER" of the image that was being hotlinked, simply decided to replace the image with a new one.

Nothing HACKED about it.

Jennifer Parker needs to be educated about BANDWIDTH THEFT.

Of course at this point in history, should we expect any more from the news media????

I knew many web journalists were lazy but this is a new low. This blog entry is slanted, inaccurate, misleading, and deceptive at best.

Even if journalists are not technical people, checking for just a few minutes would have shown no "hack" was performed. The template creator, Mike Davidson, simply changed a picture on HIS server.

Please have some decency and call this a "my simple minded view of events" instead of "hacking".

One thing Journalists are fond of reporting, is the use of the internet for presidential candidates. It is, after all, a new thing and Dean's success at it in the 2004 election showed it's great potential.

But it is also common for non-technical people to gloss over crucial details that alter the perception of the event tremendously.

So when something as juicy as this event came into the media via more "tech savvy" outlets, the people from ABC and Drudge just reacted to the juicy story, without understanding it, or not reading the original article properly.
That's what happened.

As has been amply mentioned, the actual story is a galling amount of internet discourtesy by a group that should know better.

What's the point of a free press like this? We could replace all your identical news channels with a state propaganda center and get the same range of opinions and better in-depth reporting, cheaper.

Not a hack! Not even remotely a hack. Did you even read the bit by the fellow claiming responsibility for the incident? The McCain camp--more specifically their web consultants--did two things that were morally wrong, one of which was stealing an image hundreds or thousands of times a day from someone else's site without that someone's permission. So that someone else switched the image, and McCain's people didn't realize the switch had been made for a few hours, during which time they continued to steal it and give it to visitors.