________________________________________________________________________________ Wired News Bush Polishes Online Image by Lindsey Arent 1:30 p.m. 18.Oct.99.PDT After weeks of lying dormant, the campaign Web site of Republican presidential frontrunner George W. Bush sprang to life Monday with a revamped design and a souped-up strategy. "This new design allows individuals to personalize the Web site to their interests and to get the latest news about the campaign in both Spanish and English," Bush said in a press release posted on the site. "I hope it will be a useful tool for people who are interested in learning more about my presidential campaign." The newly expanded Web site also features updated news sections by state, information for local volunteers, and a Youth Zone section where kids can learn the basics of presidential politics from illustrated baseball metaphors. The overhaul represents the first major move in the campaign's Web strategy since the site was launched in March. The redesign comes after weeks of no changes or updates whatsoever -- in striking contrast to the aggressive Net strategies waged by Republican magazine publisher Steve Forbes, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), and the Democratic contenders, former Senator Bill Bradley and Vice President Al Gore. "We've wanted to do it all along," said Bush campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker of the overhaul. "We took a lot of time to make sure we had a lot of information and the right look." Internet political consultant Robert Arena, who ran Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign on the Web, said, "(He has) tons of donors. The thing George W. Bush is missing is the ability to generate a large grassroots list off the Net." Other Web strategists viewed the site's redesign as an effort to recover from a spate of clumsy Net-related incidents. "So far, they haven't really shown a sophisticated Net strategy," said Jonah Seiger, a founder of Mindshare Net Campaigns, a bi-partisan online political strategies firm. "They've made a few strategic mistakes and it's blown up in their face a couple of times." In September, Bush raised hackles among privacy advocates by publishing the names of donors and the amount of their contributions to his presidential campaign on his Web site. Campaign reform advocates were also upset that the site disclosed the information in a way that prevented watchdog groups from making detailed analyses of the information. In May, Bush angered First Amendment advocates when he asked the Federal Election Commission to crack down on a satirical web site, www.GWBush.com. Still, the redesigned site is a vast improvement on the old one, Seiger said, especially with the newly added privacy policy. "That's a positive change." But while a new look is a good start, he added, "to measure the effect is still an open question." http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,31941,00.html ================================================================================ Wired News George W. Bush the Red? by Declan McCullagh 12:55 p.m. 19.Oct.99.PDT Intruders apparently defaced the official campaign site of Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush early Tuesday, replacing a photo of the Texas governor with a bright red hammer and sickle. Visitors said the modified Web site, which quoted socialist literature and linked to the International Communist League, was visible around 9:15 a.m. EDT. Campaign officials spent the morning trying to puzzle out exactly what happened, a task made more difficult by the fact that the Web server automatically copied over the hacked page with the original one. "We're trying to find out whether we had a visitor. Indications are that we had a visitor," said Greg Sedberry, georgewbush.com webmaster. This isn't the first time a presidential contender has been embarrassed. Vice President Al Gore's campaign site was hacked on 10 April. "Gore was broken into in April. That's the only one I know of in the 2000 race," said B.K. DeLong, curator of the defacement archive at attrition.org. On Monday, the campaign introduced a newly designed Web site, switching from a single Unix server to multiple computers running Windows NT and Microsoft's Web server. "I inherited that Unix box when I came on board [in July]," Sedberry said. "I took that box and said we need a more robust setup. It was developed from scratch, and that's where the problems can arise." The campaign's NT machines are co-located at Austin-based Illuminati Online, which says it hosts 2,000 customer Web sites. "The George W. Bush machines are not under our control. They maintain everything on those machines," said an Illuminati Online engineer. Jeremy Pinnix, webmaster of Nashville-based Anderson Thomas Design, said he noticed the hacked site early Tuesday. "I called them [the campaign] right away. They asked me to do a screen capture and to email it to them. I haven't heard back, but when I refreshed, it had been fixed," he said. "Our first battle plan is to figure out exactly what happened," said campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker. "This is obviously a problem that anyone who has a Web site faces." Sedberry said the NT machines are load-balanced, and the master Web server copies files every few minutes to the duplicate ones. "We're going through the whole system saying, 'Are we sure we locked that down?'" said campaign webmaster Sedberry. "We're finishing it up, double-checking, triple-checking. And we'll see." According to a screen snapshot, the hacked site quoted the International Communist League's belief that "we must take the Marxist doctrine of proletarian revolution out of the realm of theory and give it reality." http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,31986,00.html ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 1999 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. more information: mail to: majordomo@rolux.org, subject line: , message body: info. further questions: mail to: rolux-owner@rolux.org. archive: http://www.rolux.org