Hacking OIP Derangement Syndrome

Sophos’s Naked Security blog noted a little-reported aspect of the Healthcare.gov rollout—at least sixteen cyberattacks on the site from 6 to 8 November. It’s unclear whether there were more on other days.

In addition, Information Week reported on software programmed to overload the website. As distributed on right-wing websites, it says:

"This program continually displays alternate page of the ObamaCare website. It has no virus, Trojans, worms, or cookies. The purpose is to overload the ObamaCare website, to deny serivce [sic] to users and perhaps overload and crash the system," reads the program's grammar- and spelling-challenged "about" screen. "You can open as many copies of this program as you want. Each copy opens multiple links to the site."

The technology magazine goes on to say that the “Destroy Obama Care” tool isn’t well designed for its intended task, and therefore is less effective at slowing the federal website than the lack of cooperation from Republican state governments.

Opponents of health-insurance reform have also tried to attack the law by spreading false news. Most notoriously, on the day the website went live an anonymous person posted a long complaint from a “Will Sheehan” about suffering penalties, including loss of a driver’s license and garnished income, after trying to sign up. Politifact and other news sources showed how that story could not be true. But clearly someone had put a lot of time and imagination into concocting it.

These efforts to stop people who need health coverage from obtaining it seem akin to gluing shut the doors of a hospital, tearing down the signs to a soup kitchen, or pushing in front of poor kids at a school cafeteria. Who would do something that cruel? Only people with OIP Derangement Syndrome.