May 30th, 2008

Obama looking for help thwarting Web site hackers

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 3:40 pm

Categories: Patch Watch, Hackers, Zero-day attacks, Browsers, Vulnerability research, Open source, Passwords, Java, Arbitrary Code Execution, PCI

Tags: Web, Network, Web Site, Hacker, Web Site Development, Security, Hacking, Network Security, Networking, Web Technology

On the heels of last month’s embarrassing site breach that allowed a hacker to redirect traffic from BarackObama.com to Hillary Clinton’s Web site, the Obama campaign is looking to hire a network security expert to lock down its online operations.

According to this job listing, the campaign is offering a salaried position on its Boston, Mass.-based development team to work through the election in November to handle all aspects of online security.

[ SEE: Obama site hacked; redirected to HillaryClinton.com ]

Some responsibilities:

1. Analyzing the network architecture for the My.BarackObama website
2. Leading an overhaul of existing security systems and architecture, including policy, firewall, VPN, and networking equipment
3. Developing a strategy for responding to hack attempts, DDoS attacks, and other potential threats
4. Establishing and managing the security posture of the online campaign My.BarackObama

The Obama campaign is looking for someone with a deep understanding of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl/Python/PHP) stack, experience with firewall and VPN products and knowledge of the state of the Internet security landscape.

Last month, hackers exposed several cross-site scripting and script injection flaws on the BarackObama.com site to  HillaryClinton.com.  Some examples of the vulnerabilities have been posted to the xssed.com portal.