Tracking Rep. Foley’s IM Logs

Republican Representative Mark Foley resigned his seat in Congress in shame and entered an alcoholic recovery clinic in the wake of personal AOL Instant Messaging logs being leaked to the press.

Let me first start this by saying that what Foley did is disgusting in that the other person on the chat with him was underaged. Otherwise, had this chat occured between two adults, the leaking of this log is embarrassing and a breach of privacy.

However, there is something really wrong with this because the chat logs are three years old. To leak these logs now is clearly a political dirty trick to influence the election.

The logs here, show the Representative trying to coax his chat partner into cyber-sex, and its clear from the patter that the younger IM’er is a willing participant in the conversation. They chat about masturbation techniques and sexual fetishes. The chat took place with Foley in a hotel room in Pensacola, FL, and the other person at home somewhere in Florida. It also shows that Foley was interested in keeping the conversation private-

Xxxxxxxxx (8:10:54 PM): brb my mom is yelling

Maf54 (8:11:06 PM): ok

Xxxxxxxxx (8:14:02 PM): back

Maf54 (8:14:37 PM): cool hope se didnt see any thing

Xxxxxxxxx (8:14:54 PM): no no

Xxxxxxxxx (8:14:59 PM): she is computer dumb though

Xxxxxxxxx (8:15:01 PM): it makes me so mad

Maf54 (8:15:04 PM): good

Instant Messaging Logs for AOL Instant Messenger is stored by default, on the local hard drive. This means that there were two original sources for this chat. On Foley’s laptop, which he was using in the hotel room, and on the home PC owned by the other party.

If Foley took precautions to keep the IM conversations private, and it seemed he was, he likely purged his local logs. If he did not, he may have allowed a backup copy of his hard drive to be performed at the House Offices. This would have meant that there were three copies of the logs. Or, if Foley were really sloppy, he turned in his old laptop for a replacement without wiping the drive, and the old laptop was either reissued to someone else or it was retired with the data still on it.

There could be one more explanation as well. At the beginning of the exchange Foley experienced a disruption in his connection:

Maf54 signed off at 7:39:37 PM.

Maf54 signed on at 7:40:35 PM.

Xxxxxxxxx (7:40:44 PM): got kicked off?

Maf54 (7:41:24 PM): must have

It took an entire minute for Foley to sign back in. In 2003, there were many vulnerabilities in wireless access points. By sending a specific reset to a WAP, an attacker could kick all connections off of the wireless device and then sniff the network to steal passwords and usernames when users tried to reconnect.

Though it is unlikely, an attacker may have intercepted Foley’s credentials and used them to access Foley’s logs on his system.

So who outed Foley as a creep that tries to have cyber with boys? It wasnt Foley. This leaves the other chatter, or a member of the Help Desk at the House of Representatives. Or maybe a phantom hacker at the Pensacola hotel.

Just remember that you should never put anything on the wire that you dont want the world to see. And if you have to put it on the wire, encrypt it.