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WikiLeaks Under Fire
kan0r writes "The transparency group WikiLeaks.org currently seems to be under heavy fire. The main WikiLeaks.org DNS entry is unavailable, reportedly due to a restraining order relating to a series of articles and documents released by WikiLeaks about off-shore trust structures in the Cayman Islands. The WikiLeaks whistle blower, allegedly former vice president of the Cayman Islands branch of swiss bank Julius Baer, states in the WikiLeaks documents that the bank supported tax evasion and money laundering by its clients from around the world. WikiLeaks alternate names remained available until Saturday, when there seems to have been a heavy DDoS attack and a fire at the ISP. The documents in question are still available on other WikiLeaks sites, such as wikileaks.be, and are also mirrored on Cryptome. Details of the court documents have also been made available."
when they start shooting at you.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
You know, maybe I am a few links shy on my paperclip necklace, but don't you think it kind of conspicuous that while said DoS attack is going on, this submitter not only informed Slashdot about it, but actually pointed us all to the still-left-standing mirrors... as if to try and trigger the Slashdot effect.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
what if they did it themselves? :)
> Could the people leaked about on WikiLeaks really be this dumb? Is there anything that will guarantee that this information will be more broadly distributed and read and more likely to come to the attention of the main stream media?
Maybe that's the point.
Interesting, but not likely. WikiLeakS is already well-known and they have plenty of traffic on their site. The publisher of the leaks themselves is known and WikiLeakS is just a neutral party to this really -- they just serve up what people post.
Besides, what about the mysterious UPS fire? I find that interesting because UPSes, especially commercial grade ones installed in server rooms, typically have safety mechanisms (read: big breaker switches) in them that prevent them from overloading and catching fire. In 15 years of working in server rooms, I've never actually seen one catch fire, though I've heard of a few freak accidents.
My blog
..WikiLeaks is a flawed idea.
What they should have is a very simple page at WikiLeaks.com instructing people on how to easily download, install and use FreeNet, with FreeNet links to a FreeNet-hosted WikiLeaks website.
Then the site would not easily be able to be brought off line, because no one would know where it was hosted (since it is not actually hosted *anywhere*)
There are also a number of "citizen groups" out there that want to shut down wikileaks because they think it is anti-democratic. It seems a lot of them are affiliated with the guys who "hunt" terrorists online. One such blog of note is the "Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group". See this blog post here. Though they seem to be from a psychological operations bent rather than hackers.
"DDoS attack"
This is why WikiLeaks, although good in theory, won't be able to survive in practice. It is centralized, and being as such it can be subject to attack, threat and intimidation.
Those running WikiLeaks should also post their material to Freenet. This is advantageous for two main reasons: First, insurance against the site going down due to attack, lack of funds, etc. Second, it will prevent attacks in the first place since the attackers know nothing can be gained, there material is already out there and won't be able to be taken down. So even if Freenet isn't to be the main site, it is still useful to have the content on Freenet too.
My blog
Yes, it is possible to hack modern UPS's. That's one of the reasons it is important to keep the firmware up to date, mostly to prevent some type of SNMP snooping/monitoring software from being used. However, I'm not sure if once hacked if the UPS could be made to self destruct, it might be possible if you could turn off the charge monitoring and force an overcharge on the batteries. Just a theory, and I'm sure there are people who know better than I if this is possible.
Homo homini lupus
The problem with Wikileaks and other "expose" sites like it is that they rationalize what they do by choosing selective enforcement of privacy rights. They say that it is ok for them to trump an interest in privacy because doing so benefits the public good. While this might be laudable at the service, a more studied approach to this would show that one could also use the selective revealing of private documents to advance a political agenda. Everyone's private documents "look bad", and so, cherry picking which documents should be revealed, really just undermines the people being cherry picked.
For this reason, if you want truth, and are that interested in the truth, then you should advocate the full public disclosure of all corporate, charitable and government documents. Since this covers just about everyone, it follows that there should be no privacy at all and we ought to live in a world where everything is online. The alternative is to accept that there is a right to privacy, and if so, then institutions such as wikileaks ought to be viewed with a well deserved deep distrust, as the outcome can only be ultimately political.
This is my sig.
Psychopaths live in utterly false realities where their idea of how things work totally overshadows how things actually work. --But it does make them dangerous and tiresome, because they just keep trying to kill and destroy things and they never stop. It's like having somebody constantly trying to break down your Leggo structure while you're trying to build it. --And they'll also go running to the teacher to try to get you in trouble for the shit they're pulling.
--And information does vanish if you don't work to keep tabs on it. --The prime minister of Canada was caught trying to hide his millions worth of personal wealth from taxation in such an off-shore scheme, but it's very hard to find that info now.
One of the most effective ways for information to get lost is when the key word for the issue happens to be the same as for some other totally unrelated item which happens to be many times more current and popular. That one is frustrating.
-FL
The page about the C-64 web server, hosted elsewhere and full of pictures, only lasted a few minutes, as I recall.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What do pics datestamped 2001 (and involving Texas A&M) have to do with the wikileaks UPS fire? The way you reply, you could be saying 'yeah, this *sort* of freak accident can happen', but it comes across as 'here's pics, it wasn't a UPS but a PCU'. Care to fill in a bit more info?
...is attempting to conceal his own money laundering thru the Caymans? I can see how blackmail would motivate a corrupt judge to ignore the Constitution and sneak this injunction thru without any representation on the affected party whatsoever. And people think the Mexican judicial system is corrupt. They learned from the best! Ours.
Hard to believe, but they were taken offline by court order in the United States. A corrupt Swiss Bank, Julius Baer, objected to wikileaks posting documents showing malfeasance on the part of the bank, so this crazy judge, Jeffrey White, who really doesn't understand the First Amendment (and was nominated to the Federal bench by Bush of course), ordered the site to be taken offline. Here's a BBC link describing what happened. And another one from Counterpunch.
\
The domain is owned by people in Great Britain.
It would be interesting if a British court ordered ICAAN to transfer the domain registration from Dreamhost to a registrar of Iwein Dekoninck's choosing, under penalty that if it did not, the court would order British ISPs to blackhole anyone using Dreamhost for DNS.
This would create an international incident no doubt.
It won't happen in a UK court but I wouldn't be surprised if some small country wanted to flex its muscle in a case like this in the future.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
CHESTER COPPERPOT:
Question:
"Is it possible to overload a power supply to the point of fire from a remote location? I've heard of black hats getting into the climate control systems of certain areas and loading up the heat and frying certain parts of computers, but a power supply?"
Answer:
"The trojan has controllers on the universal power supply."
http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/11372/33500/threaded#33500
http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/11372/34207/threaded#34207
~hylas
Actually, no one may know what information was intended to be censored- there are enough companies, governments and individuals who would have motive to take the site down that the culprit has a certain level of anonymity amongst the crowd of them. For once censorship may not have the typical backfire we're used to.
My webcomic
A stipulation is an agreement between two parties in a lawsuit that a certain fact or issue is not contested. What exactly did Dynadot stipulate to? Was it just that they were indeed the registrar for wikileaks.org, or was there more?