They don't care about the facts. just the assertions no one has time to prove or disprove before the random undecided going out to votes hears about it.

CNN, Live Now... Betty Winn reporting now..

The first report around 2 pm was definately Pro-Lieberman.  This one just sloppy.

Saying whether or not it was a dos attack or just overloading from more traffic would be a little bit hard as the two amount to just about the same thing.    

At the end of the day though complaining that their site is down due to "hacking" is like a complaint that the steps were slippery.  It happens and if they are then you just need to be more careful.  Its like complaining that kos is an internet terrorist because he linked to your website and you weren't prepared for all the hits.

The post rests its case on content changing at the site, which "proves" that the Lieberman campaign has access to its server.  But all that's happened is the content of the account suspended page has been modified.  It's still the same page, and not part of the joe2006 content.

They may really have been attacked and are too incompetent to do anything about it--you know, like restoring from backups.

Or it could be Rovian ratfuck. They must be getting pretty desperate.

Bob Sullivan, MSNBC.com:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14245779/

I just emailed him to ask him to update his story with Lamont's statement.

102.9 FM in Connecticut had a little blurb on its show at 2:00 pm.

WFSB has a post up.

If their site is as down as some Liebermenschen claim, enough to take down the email, too, then why have some people on RGJoe's maling list gotten Lieberman emails last night and this morning?

The plot thickens...

This was not the first time that the site was attacked. Earlier, a hacker "got through one of the functions on the site," Geary said. The hacker then did a "SQL injection," ultimately replacing the index page. The front page of the site then read "We ownz you site." It was signed "thhacker."

thhacker on ebay, where he seems to be into vampire cards.

thhacker mention on BF2 Tracker

Anyway...

I saw this stated on a crawler at cspan1 about 30 minutes to an hour ago. Between 10 am and 11 am as I watched an Israel, Lebanon  discussion being aired.

First off, I run a webhosting business that deals with this kind of stuff all the time, and the whole "DOS attack" thing is a total farse to put it midly, as others have pointed out.

Just just put a link on my own weblog about this, but the bottom line is this was all probably caused by what's known as an 'SQL injection' within the software that the joe2006.com website was using for it's content management system.

It doesn't at all explain why their email would be down though, or why they'd have the hosting provider put up the fake 'billing' error pages.

Its not hard to get a website up in 12 hours, especially when your campaign raised 1.3 million dollars in the preceding 30 days.  

I suspect this some calculated dramatics on the part of the Joe crowd.  Why?  They know they are going to lose, and are trying to define a narrative going into the November election as an independent.

"I am a good Democrat.  I was pushed out of the party by partisan leftwing nutjobs, who dont believe in civil discourse.  They used computer tricks to make up lies about me, and even hacked into my website on election day.  We must stand up against these extremists."  

As if this election was Joe vs the Blogcano, rather than an exercise in democracy on the part of citizens of Connecticut.  

That Dan Geary guy works for Michael Whouley's consultiung firm. He's not from an independent site hosting company.

He WORKS for the Lieberman campaign as a contract consultant.

Pull Lieberman's FEC expenditure filings and connect the dots.

I don't think he'd claim to be an "MSNBC reporter."  Maybe an MSNBC consultant.

At some point last night, I can't remember exactly when, but I think between midnight and 2am, the full site was up, so it really surprised me to read this, since I thought it was all over.

That's more proof that it wasn't a hack, since they did manage (in the middle of the night) to get the site back up, so anything they're doing now is just...whining.

situation on the ground, I was wondering?

Because, I'm thinking, this "hack" nonsense isn't going to impact things much right now.  But I would like to see news of turnout, assessment of who's turning out and for whom...

Another analysis from the tech perspective: Joe2006.com site outage - staged, or incompetence? Technical (updated)

All points well taken. But even if you are the stupid MSM and are not aware of the points Matt pointed out. how about considering the following:

1) Even if it were truly a malicious attack by a Lieberman hater, it does not mean he is a Lamont supporter. Lieberman has pissed off a lot of people. It could be just some hacker getting his jollies attacking a politician in the news.

2) Why are they wasting time obsessing over an attack on their website, when common sense dictates that very few of their base will look at the website and decide to vote today. It's no secret that their big support is coming from low information voters.

3) Lamont's people have already denied it and condemned any attacks on anyone's websites. When will Lieberman apologize for the disturbances his PAID people have wrought upon Lamont's campaign appearances.

4) HAS LIEBERMAN APOLOGIZED FOR A KNOWN SUPPORTER OF HIS BEING CAUGHT RED HANDED STEALING LAMONT YARD SIGNS??? He wants Lamont to apologize for some random unknown possible attack on their website which could be brought up quickly. Yet there are already confirmed instances of Lieberman supporters' misbehavior and not a single apology to date.

5) Lieberman staff, dudes, get a life. You got so much money and you can't even hire a computer security expert to minimize downtime? Or is this just an Rovian exercise in self victimization?

OK, a couple of points.

I've got the screenshots to prove parts of this (if someone needs them, e-mail me at flaxter at gmail.com) but not all parts.

After the cPanel message about not paying bills which was the first screenshot posted at the campaign blog, someone at either the webhosting company or the campaign got their Joomla installation partially back online. First it changed to "Senator Lieberman's Campaign Website / The site is down for maintenance. / Please check back again soon." Then it changed to "Vote for who you know, Vote Joe / Please check back soon." Which is what it said until late last night. I have screenshots of this.

I unfortunately don't have the screenshot to prove it but at about 1:30 AM Pacific time Lieberman's website was completely UP. I poked around a bit and everything seemed fine and dandy.

This morning when I woke up it had a different Joomla page (you could tell by the number 2 at the bottom) which I also don't have a picture of.

Now it's back to cPanel error.

So the DOS explanation is basically out as that wouldn't mess up the database; and the fact that the website was up last night is really odd; I guess it's possible they were running Joomla 1.0.9 which was susceptible to SQL injection attacks and it got hacked really late last night, but at this point their inability to get anything up points to real ineptness.

MSNBC is showing a screenshot of lieberman2006.com.  Isn't this about joe2006.com?

Some additional sites...

CBS is carrying the story
ABC is carrying video as well as a 'wire' story by SUSAN HAIGH

I do not put too much faith in CNN news, but I can't stop thinking about why didn't they bring a specialist before the incident. I mean I have done it with some of my canadian online pharmacies and I had no problem since. It is just a site. It can be restored if those specialists are skilled enough. Why the fuss?