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Hayworth Hoo-Ha

The Bird defends J.D. Hayworth, of all people, and sticks its beak into the mystery of Gary Tupper's hacked Web site

A A A Comments By Stephen Lemons Thursday, Aug 17 2006

To get to the bottom of the bottom, this ever-inquisitive cuckoo called up Munsil's campaign manager Sean Noble to ask him if his IT boys hacked Tupper's site.

"Nope, we did not," avowed Noble. "In fact, we couldn't hack our way out of a paper bag."

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Tupper was not amused when The Bird got back up with him later that same day. Tupper'd finally gotten home and been able to see his defaced site, which announced it had been "Owned by NetDevil." NetDevil's a common Trojan Horse program that "allows a hacker to remotely control an infected computer," according to software security giant Symantec.

"I hold [Munsil] responsible," growled Tupper. "If he didn't do it directly, his people did it, and that shows he can't control his own people. He needs to be held accountable."

Hey, The Bird's no Kevin Mitnik — you know, the most famous cyber criminal in history — but maybe Tupper just needs an anti-virus upgrade. After all, hackers will hack anything they can, from MySpace pages to Web sites for musicians, and they don't need a political excuse to do it. Hackers are like electronic taggers. They do it for the thrill and for the havoc they can wreak.

Tupper's not buying the lone-hacker theory, and apparently neither is the Arizona Republic's Dan Nowicki. In Nowicki's political blog Plugged In, he called it "the latest Internet dirty trick in the Republican gubernatorial race." After all, Tupper had campaign ads scheduled to air on Fox 10 that evening featuring the Web address for the hacked page, ads Tupper had to pull at the last minute. (Tupper's site is back up, in case you're dying to visit it.)

The Feathered One wouldn't be surprised if the culprit behind the rape of Tupper's Web page turned out to be some cockeyed Len Munsil follower. (Aren't they all cockeyed?) On the other hand, what's the likelihood they'll ever catch the 'puter prankster responsible? Yep, Tupper best invest in some software upgrades before some pimply teen with a laptop strikes again.

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