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Government Security Politics

Hacker Disrupts New Zealand Election Campaign 75

An anonymous reader writes New Zealand is facing its weirdest election ever with a hacker calling himself "Rawshark" progressively dumping emails hacked from a controversial blogger. This weekend, revelations forced the resignation of one Government minister and nobody knows what will drop next. Emails revealed that the blogger, called "Whale Oil", was in contact with both a government minister in charge of New Zealand's white collar crime investigations unit and with a PR man acting for a founder of a failed finance company then under investigation.
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Hacker Disrupts New Zealand Election Campaign

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  • Way to go (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 01, 2014 @04:18AM (#47798923)

    We need alot of more this kind of hackers.
    They keep tabs on us, invade our privacy, no reason not to do the same to them.

    Hack the planet!

    • The role of the Patriot is to protect its country from its government.
      Way to go!

      • A war is when your government tells you who the enemy is. A revolution is when you figure it out for yourself.

    • by Livius ( 318358 )

      We are not completely sure what kind of hacker this is. Revealing the truth selectively could create an unfair situation, which is not what you want for an election.

    • by linatux ( 63153 )

      Good to see things being stirred up, but I'm concerned the hacker is releasing only what will achieve his/her agenda rather than the whole truth.

    • by ASDFnz ( 472824 )

      We need alot of more this kind of hackers.
      They keep tabs on us, invade our privacy, no reason not to do the same to them.

      Hack the planet!

      I am from New Zealand and I agree. However I do have an issue as to how it is done.

      Unlike Snowden or Wikileaks it is exceedingly obvious that it (and I hate saying this because it is such a cliché) it is some sort of left wing conspiracy. We are only getting half of the story and the releases go to great pains to not damage the left wing.

      If everything was released it would have more credibility (with me at least).

  • Voip SMS Fixed (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The Whale Oil blogger was also involved in revealing a sex scandal involving the PM trying to remove a Mayor. Threatening text messages where sent and the NZ Herald newspaper put out a public appeal to unearth the sender. It turns out that the Caller ID was one of the free international Voip SMS local forwarding numbers that had for years been diverted by the local Telecom in their attempt to frustrate its users. When this Voip SMS connection was made known to the newspaper, details of how to crack the exch

  • "Rawshark"... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by He Who Has No Name ( 768306 ) on Monday September 01, 2014 @04:51AM (#47799015)

    ...sounds like a reference to that exact accented pronunciation of Rorschach's name in Watchmen (the original graphic novel, when Veidt calls the police to tip them off).

    That can't be a coincidence.

  • Rawshark reads a stream of packets from a file or pipe, and prints a line describing its output, followed by a set of matching fields for each packet on stdout. https://www.wireshark.org/docs... [wireshark.org]
  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday September 01, 2014 @04:59AM (#47799031)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Anonymous Coward

    But you have to pronounce it really fast

  • by Anonymous Coward

    You know what? Fuck you Slashdot.

    You used to work just fine, but now I have to try and post something three or four or five times before I get this shit:

    This resource is no longer valid. Please return to the beginning and try again.

    I'm sick of it. You keep referring me to beta when I go to stories, ignoring the nobeta=1 part of the address, and now this shit.

    Sick to death of this complete fucking incomptence.

  • feeding the whale (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 01, 2014 @05:40AM (#47799139)

    Firstly there was the book "Dirty Politics" by Nicky Hager which contained the allegations backed up now by selective releases by whaledump :D (Theres an ebook on a certain nautical site i wont mention ;)
    The National government have been feeding sensitive info to this vitriolic blogger called Cameron "WhaleOil" Slater (WO) and using him to do their dirty work.
    There has been information "released" to WO under freedom of information, that had been denied other more legitimate journalists so that WO could launch his attack, there is evidence he was instructed as to which information to specifically request and the request was processed in an extremely short time.
    This is what has brought down our (Ex) Minister for Justice (ROFL) Judith Collins. The filth washes right to the Prime Minister John Keys "Office" and as an ex corporate banker involved in the Derivatives trade there are quite a few people that are not surprised, only elated that the filth gets shown before our election and not after.

  • by twosat ( 1414337 ) on Monday September 01, 2014 @05:46AM (#47799153)

    As if Prime Minister John Key does not have enough problems, Kim Dotcom has revealed that he will drop a bombshell on him. He is warning that something big will come out on September 15, just five days from the election. He says WikiLeaks founder and fugitive Julian Assange, who's holed up in Ecuador's London embassy, is set to take part in a pre-election attack on John Key. The addition of Mr Assange confirms the event will be about New Zealand's spying.

    http://tvnz.co.nz/vote-2014-ne... [tvnz.co.nz]

  • by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 ) on Monday September 01, 2014 @05:59AM (#47799193) Homepage

    for a founder of a failed finance company

    So close! The correct word to use here was "firm."

    • by FatLittleMonkey ( 1341387 ) on Monday September 01, 2014 @06:57AM (#47799371)

      for a founder of a failed finance company then under investigation

      "for a founder of a failed finance firm then facing..." Can't make "investigation" work. Although that "V" might be close enough already. "Official fact-finding"? Doesn't really carry the same meaning.

      [Aside: The headline is misleading. It implies that a hack somehow interfered directly with the election mechanism. The hacker revealed corruption, it's the corruption which will disrupt the election chances of one of the major parties. "Hacked revelations threaten NZ National Party re-election bid". It's not like the hacker sabotaged a party's campaign site, or got into the ballot-printing or e-voting system. The difference between someone poisoning your company's products and someone revealing the poison your company puts in their products. In one case, they are the cause of the disruption, in the other they are just the messenger, you are the cause.]

  • by Anonymous Coward

    If you have nothing to hide you shouldn't be worried, right? You fucking cocksuckers. I hope these hacker dudes take down more of these arrogant parasites. Come to Quebec my friends! We need a MAJOR cleanup, the "leadership class" here is off the rails.

  • Naive New Zealand (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 01, 2014 @07:11AM (#47799427)

    I'm a NZer, though I live in London now. When I lived in Auckland, an American exchange student once described NZ as the country that is like America was before everyone got fucked over by someone else. It is so painfully is true. Our naive innocence is now being exploited by a bunch of international con artists (dotcom and john key) and we are just being take for a joy ride. Give us another five years of this and we'll all become a bunch of suspicious unfriendly people like the rest of the world.

    • Re:Naive New Zealand (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Jack Griffin ( 3459907 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2014 @12:08AM (#47804495)
      I have a theory on this. Why is it that countries like NZ and Iceland etc are nice and friendly while others are angry and hostile. Two key components, size and isolation. Being small means you are always manageable and less prone to corruption (yeah it's still there, but at a far smaller scale as to not be an major issue). Being small also means everyone knows each other, so it's harder to be a jerk when your decision directly affect people you actually know. Isolation creates the benefit of not having every Tom, Dick or Mohammed coming through the place trying to take pieces of it. It offers no strategic value so all the jerks focus on bigger targets, leaving you with only lightweight jerks. Neither of these things are going to change in the short or medium term, so I wouldn't worry too much. One outcome of this idea, is that along the lines of the Monkeysphere theory, maybe countries like the US and China are too big? Maybe the best path for humanity is smaller countries and/or states? Corruption seems to be a function of size, so if the world was divided into NZ/Iceland type chunks would we all be better off?

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