Flashes of Panic

Great article in Wired News today about the lack of security at the major presidential websites. The summary is, both sites have structural weaknesses (potential SQL injection and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities); both sites have privacy policies which are essentially meaningless (and, in some places, contain bald-faced lies); both sites track visitors in ways they don’t tell you about, the Bush site particularly obviously. The Bush site also has significant network vulnerabilities.

The part I found most amusing, however, was the software roundup, which fits the liberal vs. conservative stereotypes pretty well:

[T]he Kerry site is housed on an Apache Web server running on a Red Hat Linux box. The Bush website is hosted on a Microsoft IIS 5.0 server and uses Microsoft’s ASP.net.

Now playing: When I’m Here from This Town Is Wrong by Nerissa & Katryna Nields