Obamacare Failure: Time To Blame Hackers

reply to post by windword


Why would you hack a site that doesn't even work as designed?
I dunno, seems like the .gov site is its own worst enemy.

And not worthy of hacking.

reply to post by theantediluvian


This is basics in fundamental pass the buck politics.

Fact: The website does not work, and it is not secure.
Fact: HHS was in charge of its site design build.
Fact: HHS was advised site was not secure, and failed basic tests.
Fact: This administration does not know anything, they say this everyday.

Then they must blame something, someone, how will the general
public ever know the difference? Blame it on hackers, Verizon etc...


Fact: Breaking News

No Hope Left for Obamacare’s Website, Techies Say

“When I visited HealthCare.gov on October 1, that was the worst piece
of software I’ve ever experienced in my life,” said Luke Chung, founder
and CEO of the software company FMS. “It had nothing to do with too
many users. It couldn’t serve one user.”

According to Sumit Nijhawan, CEO of Infogix, a data security firm
working with private insurers, even if the White House can fix the
problems associated with the site, they're going to find new ones
immediately. Nijhawan also warned that the systems that allow CMS
and health insurance companies to exchange information
are nowhere close to being ready, meaning tech problems
could last years.

Show me a single government project over the last decade that has worked. Any one. You can be assured that any time the government gets involved in anything it will instantly become over-budget, late, under-performing (if it performs at all) and some friends of a group of politicians will cash-in. Don't care if it's Obama, the Reps, the Dems, makes no difference. Government = guaranteed fail.

reply to post by Bassago

Nov 13 (Reuters) - The Obama administration's troubled HealthCare.gov site has been subject to an unsuccessful cyber attack aimed at overwhelming and taking down the site, a U.S. cybersecurity official said on Wednesday.

"We are aware of one open source action attempting a denial of service attack that has been unsuccessful," Roberta Stempfley, acting assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Cybersecurity and Communications, told lawmakers.

One attempted, unsuccessful attack. Maybe at least one of you who are buying into the garbage from this dubious, one paragraph source should stop starring the others long enough to make sure it's actually true?

If those of you who have been commenting without knowing the facts had any real scruples, you'd remove all of your flags, star this comment for illuminating the truth and move on to the next thread because this is clearly nothing but spin.

reply to post by theantediluvian

One attempted, unsuccessful attack. Maybe at least one of you who are buying into the garbage from this dubious, one paragraph source should stop starring the others long enough to make sure it's actually true?

Huh? Roberta Stempfley, acting assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Cybersecurity and Communications is not a valid source for you? It was your source.

Anyway, everyone knows the website suffered and failed under a massive self induced DDoS the first day it went live. Wait, that was just the citizens trying to log in.

Bassago
reply to post by theantediluvian

 

One attempted, unsuccessful attack. Maybe at least one of you who are buying into the garbage from this dubious, one paragraph source should stop starring the others long enough to make sure it's actually true?

Huh? Roberta Stempfley, acting assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Cybersecurity and Communications is not a valid source for you? It was your source.

Anyway, everyone knows the website suffered and failed under a massive self induced DDoS the first day it went live. Wait, that was just the citizens trying to log in.

edit on 923pm1212pm32013 by Bassago because: (no reason given)

Really?

Back in October, when Obamacare's birthing problems first became evident, and when healthcare.gov was revealed as the best website ever built... using ForTran... we suggested that it was only a matter of time before Obama blames the evil, terroristy hackers of the world and mostly of Syria. Moments ago, that just happened.

Can you please point out to me how any part of your "source" is correct?

- Did Roberta Stempfley blame a DDoS for anything? No. She mentioned 1, UNSUCCESSFUL attempt.
- Did she say anything about Syria? No.
- Did she say anything about terrorists? No.

So again, can you please explain to me how anything from that one paragraph blog post is true?

In light of the obamacare websites colossal failure the administration has blamed pretty much everyone it can think of to pass the buck. When trying to determine truth from spin it's nice to get validation of your sources and once again ZeroHedge comes through.

Yeah, I can tell there's a real interest in cutting through that spin to get at the truth.

reply to post by theantediluvian


If you want to say the administration hasn't spun the truth, blamed others, didn't know anything about anything be my guest. Zerohedge predicted the administration would play the hacker card and lo and behold, they did. And your source confirms it. Doesn't matter how many times, ZH only had to be right and they were.

I'm also only a little surprised that there weren't many more attacks, guess no one thought it was worth more effort.

And the strange thing HHS works with the biggest hackers in the world on a daily basis. CDC needs a doctor call the Navy. CDC needs a helicopter call the Navy. Swine Flu HHS call the Navy. HHS does a website and the VA took days to even connect to it?

ketsuko
You have proof that this is actually a DDOS attack and not just the stupid thing breaking all of its own?

I mean proof beyond the government's word, of course. We all know what that's worth.

This could turn into a CT's most exciting wet dream.

Consider that the govt might go after total control of the web. Govt says, "The web was built by us, for us, ... and because of these hackers, we're taking it back. It just isn't safe enough for regular Sheople."

ETA: One of the glaringly absent questions I've noticed regarding ObamaramaCare is a correlation between the phrase "signed up" and "signed up with a new insurance policy" ... Think about it.

burntheships

sealing

I mean it's not like an entire political party would throw a tantrum just because
a vetted by the Supreme Court law was passed.

And you think that the SCOTUS judges are beyond reproach?
See your signature for a good idea of how to identify them.

"...Brought to you by the Supreme Court of the United States. Proud deciders of Dredd Scott v. Sanford, Korematsu v. United States, Bush v. Gore, Kelo v. New London, Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, and many, many more!"

reply to post by BobM88


Indeed, and I always find it amusing when someone says
Well the Supreme Court of The United States has 'vetted', 'ruled', etc ....

Whoa..... Let's back up a minute. I'm still stuck on the 'written in Fortran' part. Who uses Fortran anymore?!

I first thought this was just a sign of incompetence. Then thought..No..We heard it was a decent skill set the job was contracted out to. So, THAT level of dumb isn't explained that way. Job Security through proprietary code?? Err... Fortran isn't exactly proprietary, but may as well be for how many could sit down and write up something quick and meaningful with it. Uncle Sammy is an old coot, but even he wouldn't let that one slip by on accident.

So... hey.... Who DOES use Fortran? This thing was written for compatibility but obviously, consumer standard wasn't it. So, which Government entities was it considered more important to have a seamless interface with than to meet any modern web design and E-commerce standards with? What big agencies still need that compatibility, despite much much much (did I mention much?) better ways of doing things?

This worries me as one of those little details often overlooked but which say more than an entire story combined at times.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


It's not Fortran. Someone's pulling your leg.

Looking at the splashpage in Chrome's webtools is interesting though. One of the scripts is "1179.js" and there's no code in it. That seems weird to me.

They sure seem to be utilizing a lot of third party tools too: Optimizely, Rum-Static, Google, Double-Click, Cloudfront, ytimg (which I'm assuming goes youtube api).

reply to post by BobM88


I guess it's ZeroHedge pulling everyone's leg, as they stated the Fortran being used in the coding for the infrastructure. The comments over there seemed to indicate others took it in just the same way?

For what it's worth, I know the IRS was using Enable (a very old forerunner to MS Office, put simply) right into the late 90's. Way past it's shelf life or any other decent life it ever had to give. lol.... So the antique language isn't what got me so much as what it might imply.

* Before I get it from the other side... lol.. I know Fortran is still taught and used in some places.. It's not like Aramaic for a dead language or anything. Then again, plenty of command line DOS stuff still works too, not that anyone uses it much.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

I guess it's ZeroHedge pulling everyone's leg, as they stated the Fortran being used in the coding for the infrastructure.

No way, ZeroHedge would never do that. Also in the first article they actually showed Obama's state of the art computer designed to run Commodore-Fortran for the web site.

Ive heard the site was essentially designed to be a DDOS attack on itself with 40 different linked in databases & the users trying to access the site acting as unintentional hackers.

IMO - the site was never designed to work.

hmmm... After going out around the net a little bit to look into it, I'm just a bit unsure if that isn't what actually happened here. Who knew Fortran was actually still a very seriously taught language for basic structure and .. err.. yeah, one site did mention web application for Fortran 90, whatever that is. Could it be? Could they really have?

We can all just have one big group face palm moment if it turns out.. Well.. Naww.. they couldn't really ... could they?

Colorado State

The Fortran Company

University of Liverpool

England likes Fortran more than we, it seems. Much of the University courses are in British Universities. One in Oxford ...Didn't the first lady have something to do with the contract going out to a Princeton guy? Nawww.. couldn't have been. I just share the above in a 'gotta see it to believe it' thing. I sure did.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Well, I'll never say something's impossible, but it would seriously be the craziest web development ever, and as you said...the biggest facepalm moment in recent history.

It looks like they have a fairly standard CGI setup over Apache. Highly unlikely someone's written some fortran apps to run in that environment. However, if they did, it wouldn't be the most shocking thing from D.C. lately either.