So, if you were not on Dailykos late last night (about 1 AM Eastern), you may not be aware of this fiasco. There is a still a lot of uncertainty it seems like, and not a good collection of the recent events, so I figured I would try to bring together all the information I could find. I am not a part of the campaign, but have always been supportive of their efforts and reading the diaries here at dk.
Around 1 AM, multiple StopRush-Related diaries were published to the recents list, to the tune of 30-40, all at once, flooding the list and pushing out all other diaries.
They were from multiple accounts: hrhprissy, Carol Kernahan, and FlushRush. Almost all of the diaries were related to the Stop Rush Limbaugh campaign.
Most of the diaries were old posts. They had old comments, old recommends, and old tip jar. However, the diaries had new timestamps, indicating they were republished.
It was mentioned here during last night's open thread.
In this thread, serendipidity pulls information from one of the account's profiles.
I was activist born and activist bred and when I die I'll be activist dead. I have previously posted as carolkili, hrhprissy, and flushfools.
Almost all the diaries have since been deleted and removed from the list, judging by
the helpdesk ticket, after about an hour or so.
The events sparked this diary. Obviously, the title is meant to be taken in a light-hearted fashion. In an update, the post describes information that may provide clues on what was going on.
11:27 AM PT: Per elfling in the comments:
Looks like a bunch of old historic diaries were unpublished and then republished today. I don't know if this was deliberate to spam the recent list or an unfortunate misunderstanding of how to republish to a group.
What I do know is that when you do this, you change the diary URL even though it keeps the content and the comments. It will break the URLs if there were any pointers to these diaries on the internet, so all that linkage is gone and can't be replaced.
hrhprissy's twitter account does not seem to show any suspicious activity. There has been one recent retweet, but before that, the most recent tweet was last night at 7 PM Eastern, so it was a few hours before the diaryspam.
At first blush, hrhprissy's comments here at dailykos also look like that of a regular diarykos user.
Some speculation is that the diarists themselves are zombies or some sort of sleeper. I think the original diarists were legit. As pointed out in this comment by Eyesbright, Carol Kernahan has been targeted for doxxing by Rush operatives.
It even mentions in the law suit that Carol Kernahan Wallin uses the Twitter IDs @hrhprissy, @perplcat, and formerly [email blocked]
The law suit doxes (reveals personally identifiable information) on numerous members of Stop Rush. It also includes the information that Carol "writes a column for a large activist website called DailyKos.com. A primary goal of DailyKos.com, like that of StopRush, is to get Mr. Limbaugh off the airwaves."
My assessment at this point is to agree that it seems to be a cyber attack directed at the Stop Rush campaign. I base this on the results: as a result of last night, many StopRush-related diaries are now deleted. Their significant posters bojo'd or timeout. Several had been widely Rec'ced, but because they were republished, any web pointers to the posts wouldn't work, even if they hadn't been deleted.
Of course, I hope others use this information to draw their own conclusions, even if different.
I don't know how credible all of the information I have presented here is. All I have tried to do is gather all the information about last nights events from their disparate sources and present it as wholely as possible.
I don't have a twitter account, so maybe someone can try to tweet hrhprissy to see if they are even aware any of this happened, and if they can get any type of response.
All in all, witnessing this all happening in real-time, and then the aftermath, it has been quite perplexing, fascinating, but also, unfortunate.
Fri Mar 27, 2015 at 7:15 AM PT: It does not appear that a third party ever accessed hrhprissy's account. Although it is not elaborated upon, I am conjecturing that this is supported by cross-checking IP addresses. My opinion is now somewhere along this line.
I finally remembered that sending someone a kosmail will also send them an e-mail, so I have msged her hrhprissy and carolkili accounts through kosmail. Will update if I ever hear back.
Sat Mar 28, 2015 at 9:11 AM PT: I have finally heard back from carol. I have posted her response here.