Duncan Hunter's '08 Web Site Hacked

Oct. 1, 2007 — -- The Web site of Republican presidential hopeful California Rep. Duncan Hunter was hacked into sometime Sunday night from overseas and altered with anti-Iraq War images.

Under the "Duncan Hunter for President '08" banner, visitors to gohunter08.com today saw a graphic informing them that the site had been "hacked by Adnali f0r TurkStorm [dot] org No War!" Underneath were grainy images of young children in what appeared to be a war zone, one sitting in front of a tank and another with his bloody head wrapped in gauze.

Hunter, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, is perhaps the staunchest defender of the Iraq War in the Republican presidential field.

The Web site turkstorm.org is registered in Turkey, but through an IP address in Germany. At the Web site are only the words "yakinda online." An exhaustive Google search unearths no clear indication who exactly hacked the site and whether they are associated with a particular group, but apparently shows Adnali to be a prolific hacker, though not always of political sites.

A message sent to an e-mail address associated with turkstorm.org has gone unanswered.

Sunday's cyberattack was the sixth time in recent months that hackers had attempted to alter the gohunter08.com site, said Roy Tyler, Hunter's spokesman. However, this was the first time the hackers successfully altered the campaign Web site for a lengthy period of time.

Tyler was unaware of the hacking midmorning today, but by noon, the campaign had pulled the anti-war message off the Web site.

"It is the cyberwar of the political campaign," said Ravi Singh, CEO of ElectionMall.com, the firm that developed Hunter's Web site.

Singh said the firm also had detected and fought off hackers Wednesday.

In addition to the frustration of having a campaign's carefully crafted message altered or reversed on its official Web site, there is the added risk that with online fundraising taking off, hackers might be after more than a political statement.