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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."
Wikileaks is an interesting website, and I can see no reason why anyone would want to take a site hosting confidential leaked documents from governments and big business offline...
Speaking seriously here, I wouldn't doubt it being a corporate or political DDoS attack, considering the confidentiality of the documents, and how damaging they could be to said companies/governments' reputations. Not a bad thing in my opinion, but they would think otherwise.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
I hereby judge that WikiLeak's DNS entry is not allowed to pass within 100 feet of any US DNS server, on penalty of having to memorise himself in IPv6 form
which is totally what she said
Great idea. On top of a DDoS attack lets add the Slashdot effect. I can smell the smoke pouring off their servers.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
To those behind the attacks: It's too late!
Remember: What's once on the internet stays on the internet...one way or another.
Just deal with it.
When you're slapped with a restraining order, you get hit with a dDOS, and one of your UPS units "accidentally" ignites , you know you must be doing something right.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
when they start shooting at you.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Wake me up when the anchor of a ship accidentally cuts every cable around the WikiLeaks server buildings..
You just got troll'd!
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?
Why don't they just go the whole hog and DDoS the BBC and CNN at the same time to close the loop.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
the Streisand effect should be kicking in about now...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
You know it could always be some 14 year old prankster who figured out how to DDOS a server, and correctly thought "Hey, if I can effectively shut off WikiLeaks, everyone will assume that groups which suffer from WikiLeaks were responsible." I mean it takes alot of brains to maintain a big business, I doubt the CTO or CIO of a giant firm suggested DDOSing a fairly well-known website in order to prevent access to content.
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?
Secondly, Does wikileaks hold a record of the DDoS? As in the technical parameters, IPs etc.?
Thirdly, is their a translation to English of the bank records in question yet?
Personally I can resolve the wikileaks.org hostname from time to time only. Their website is still accessible from my network location (SoCal): http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks
$ dig wikileaks.orgwikileaks.org. 864 IN A 88.80.13.160
wikileaks.org. 864 IN A 87.106.162.82
wikileaks.org. 198841 IN NS ns3.everydns.net.
wikileaks.org. 198841 IN NS ns2.everydns.net.
wikileaks.org. 198841 IN NS ns4.everydns.net.
ns2.everydns.net. 101251 IN A 204.152.184.150
ns3.everydns.net. 12596 IN A 208.96.6.134
ns4.everydns.net. 601 IN A 64.158.219.3
(special message dedicated to whoever wrote the slashdot lameness filter: foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar)
..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.
I doubt a 14 year old prankster who figured out how to DDOS a server could manage a 500Mbps attack.
It takes time to build up a botnet of that scale and remain undetected.
Just what the _fuck_ are these people on about. "Directing unauthorized viewers at the classified material"?
I guess I now know what too much Tom Clancy will do to a person.
Is David helvetic and Goliath a bear?
DANIEL SCHMITT
2008-02-15
This is the story of Rudolf Elmer of Switzerland, former Chief Operating Officer of Bank Julius Baer on the Cayman Islands. The story of a man suspected of leaking to the press information about the activities of a Swiss bank specialized in hiding and laundering the money of the ultra rich through anonymizing offshore trust structures. It also is the story of a man and his family living with the consequences of being suspected of fouling the nest of a traditional Swiss bank engaging in dubious activities. This story might differ from previous ones related to this issue, mainly because while researching the story, Rudolf Elmer has also been asked for his account of things.
Over the last few months Wikileaks has obtained and published various documents related to allegedly illegal activities in the Cayman Islands performed by Bank Julius Baer and started initial research into these. Regarding the same bank Wikileaks had obtained legal documentation on the case of a Rudolf Elmer, former debuty head of BJB cayman, in a Dec 2007 Zurich court case against Bank Julius Baer. The law suit relates to various irregularities of health-care/social-security payments by the bank, as well as the matter of stalking (including at least one acknowledged car chase) Elmer and his family by BJB-hired Private Investigators Zurich-based Ryffel AG,
Initial research easily turned up that 2002/2003 some sensitive documents had slipped out of the Swiss banks office in the Cayman Islands, apparently reaching US tax investigation units and eventually sent to the Swiss financial magazine CASH, which reported on the disclosure, but possibly due to an injunction or Swiss banking law, not the details. This event also triggered an article in the Wall Street Journal an article in Swiss Weltwoche, titled "The leak in paradise", giving background information on what happened back in 2003 on the Caymans.
When the leak of trust structures was discovered in 2003, Bank Julius Baer initiated legal investigations on the Caymans, involving the search of the home of each employee and when not gaining any insights from that, undertaking a polygraph test on the employees. It still remained unclear where the data went.
The group of people having legitimate access to these documents was small, Rudolf Elmer, who was BJB Caymans deputy head and Chief Operating Officer at that point in time also fulfilled the position of Hurricane Officer, whos duties included keeping backups. Elmer, facing a spinal surgery coming up in a few days time, was on sick leave and had some trouble scheduling the test. He thus became a suspect.
The Polygraph Test
The transcript of the polygraph test conducted by a Lou Criscella and passed on to Wikileaks is very abstract to read with names of clients being substituted with single letters. While not all the context thus is properly understandable, the transcript does not show any wrongdoing.
Reading the transcript one gets the impression that data has slipped out of the Cayman Islands as early as 1997, and timelining the transcript with a couple of later documents will also reveal that Elmer is accused of having leaked data that was produced after the date that he left from the Caymans.
Elmer complained to the American Polygraph Association, the institution his interrogator works for, the Cayman Prime Minister and other entities about the conduct of the test.
Normally sick people would not be interviewed, but the APAs Ethics Commission, stated in a letter that the ethical rules for polygraphing do not apply to the Cayman Islands, and as the test had not been fully carried out, most of the APA rules would not apply anyway. He was informed there are no regulations on the Caymans for polygraph tests as in the United States.
My 0.02 cents
This is a real way of hitting back - respond to this attempt at burying WikiLeaks by giving them extra publicity!
Deleted
Oh my. The disappointing part of that collection of videos is that Balmer didn't give himself a heart attack. --In any case, it was nice to note that even though the apocalypse arrived and nobody thought to wake me up, I was still able to catch it on Youtube.
-FL
A 14 yo prankster with enough skillz can direct an existing botnet to conduct the attack... They're all controlled by an IRC-like protocol, and if they're encrypted, that's what a man-in-the-middle attack based on IP spoof is for. Botnets don't have security strong enough to withstand that.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
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.
Offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands are used for tax fraud???? I thought they were there for decoration. Seriously; I was under the opinion that their reputation along these lines was well-established?
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
By "psychological operations" you mean "operations by lunatics" amiright?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
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
It is not UNDER fire, it is ON fire!
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
WikiLeaks on The Onion appears to be unaffected. Gotta love that that server is anonymously located. If you want to read the document, follow the link above and install TOR, then punch in the URL in the subject...
;-).
Guess I should have posted this as an anonymous coward
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
The site is blocked by stopping its DNS. So what's its IP#? If the site is still up, people can link to it by IP#, and pass around the story that way. Sure, if its IP# changes later, the links will be lost, but if it doesn't get its DNS back eventually it will be lost anyway. Linking to its IP# will help it survive to fight to get its DNS back.
The court has targeted WikiLeaks' DNS registrar, not WikiLeaks itself with this order. So WikiLeaks shouldn't have to depend on DNS while it defends itself.
What's the IP#?
--
make install -not war
You can't mount a decent psychological or intelligence-based warfare against an enemy if you publish what you're going to do every step of the way. I'm not trying to advocate censorship here but I'd love to hear a *serious* answer as to how you expect any country to mount this sort of effort under the limitations of full disclosure.
Some specific points I'd like to discuss:
- What is the point of publishing Coalition "soft spots" to the public? Aren't you just begging for terrorists to attack them? It makes perfect sense to publish this to a limited group of trusted people that can fix the problem but not to the general public. Again, I understand there are times where publishing this information might be appropriate, but for the vast majority of the time it is not.
- What is the point of publishing real-time army positions and schedules to the public? Is anyone benefiting from this except from the terrorists?
etc.
My point is that Wikileaks or others have published certain information in the past that has absolutely no benefit to anyone except the very people trying to kill our troops. It's one thing to publish information which embarrasses governments or big companies, it's another thing altogether to publish information whose sole use is the killing of our people.
http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Clouds_on_the_Cayman_tax_heaven
Clouds on the Cayman tax heaven
From Wikileaks
Jump to: navigation, search
Is David helvetic and Goliath a bear?
DANIEL SCHMITT
2008-02-15
This is the story of Rudolf Elmer of Switzerland, former Chief Operating Officer of Bank Julius Baer on the Cayman Islands. The story of a man suspected of leaking to the press information about the activities of a Swiss bank specialized in hiding and laundering the money of the ultra rich through anonymizing offshore trust structures. It also is the story of a man and his family living with the consequences of being suspected of fouling the nest of a traditional Swiss bank engaging in dubious activities. This story might differ from previous one's related to this issue, mainly because while researching the story, Rudolf Elmer has also been asked for his account of things.
Over the last few months Wikileaks has obtained and published various documents related to allegedly illegal activities in the Cayman Islands performed by Bank Julius Baer and started initial research into these. Regarding the same bank Wikileaks had obtained legal documentation on the case of a Rudolf Elmer, former debuty head of BJB cayman, in a Dec 2007 Zurich court case against Bank Julius Baer. The law suit relates to various irregularities of health-care/social-security payments by the bank, as well as the matter of stalking (including at least one acknowledged car chase) Elmer and his family by BJB-hired Private Investigators Zurich-based Ryffel AG,
Initial research easily turned up that 2002/2003 some sensitive documents had slipped out of the Swiss banks office in the Cayman Islands, apparently reaching US tax investigation units and eventually sent to the Swiss financial magazine CASH, which reported on the disclosure, but possibly due to an injunction or Swiss banking law, not the details. This event also triggered an article in the Wall Street Journal an article in Swiss Weltwoche, titled "The leak in paradise", giving background information on what happened back in 2003 on the Caymans.
When the leak of trust structures was discovered in 2003, Bank Julius Baer initiated legal investigations on the Caymans, involving the search of the home of each employee and when not gaining any insights from that, undertaking a polygraph test on the employees. It still remained unclear where the data went.
The group of people having legitimate access to these documents was small, Rudolf Elmer, who was BJB Caymans deputy head and Chief Operating Officer at that point in time also fulfilled the position of Hurricane Officer, whos duties included keeping backups. Elmer, facing a spinal surgery coming up in a few days time, was on sick leave and had some trouble scheduling the test. He thus became a suspect.
The Polygraph Test
The transcript of the polygraph test conducted by a Lou Criscella and passed on to Wikileaks is very abstract to read with names of clients being substituted with single letters. While not all the context thus is properly understandable, the transcript does not show any wrongdoing.
Reading the transcript one gets the impression that data has slipped out of the Cayman Islands as early as 1997, and timelining the transcript with a couple of later documents will also reveal that Elmer is accused of having leaked data that was produced after the date that he left from the Caymans.
Elmer complained to the American Polygraph Association, the institution his interrogator works for, the Cayman Prime Minister and other entities about the conduct of the test.
Normally sick people would not be interviewed, but the APA's Ethics Commission, stated in a letter that the ethical rules for polygraphing do not apply to the Cayman Islands, and as the test had not been fully carried out, most of the APA rules would not apply anyway. He was informed there are no regulations on the Caymans for polygrap
This court order has blocked the Wikileaks.org DNS. But the site is still up and running at its IP number, which is 88.80.13.160 .
Spread the word. DNS can be replaced, with some inconvenience, with manual labor.
--
make install -not war
WikiLeaks is also available at WikiLeaks.be, which Belgian DNS is not under the Califoria court's jurisdiction.
--
make install -not war
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I guess we all need to add 88.80.13.160 and 87.106.162.82 to our sigs, right under the DeCSS key.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Pragmatically, there is no right to privacy. Get used to it. Not only that, there is no moral reason to uphold a right to privacy. Finally, there is no longer any practical reason to uphold privacy rights.
Let me explain.
Privacy is a stopgap measure. It existed to ensure that those who had better access to information and more power to act on that information could not use that to dominate the rest of us. If everyone has equal access to information, then we can know when someone is trying to use their power to gather or act on information to harm someone else, and we can act collectively to stop them. There is no practical reason to have privacy if everyone can see what everyone else is doing.
There is no moral reason to uphold privacy because it is essentially limiting other people's rights. If no one else were around limiting me, I could experience anything that I had the physical capacity to experience. Privacy limits my freedom to access information. While that my have been a useful compromise at one time, it is rapidly approaching the point where it no longer will be.
And pragmatically, bad guys do not respect the right to privacy while at the same time demanding it. Good guys won't use the information they gained to harm another. It's like guns, outlaw them and only outlaws have guns. Outlaw access to information and only outlaws will have access to that information.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
> I doubt the CTO or CIO of a giant firm suggested DDOSing...
That isn't the role of the CxO; the CxO could be punished for saying such a thing. The CxO has a carefully selected team which correctly interprets "we NEED to hush this up" into the appropriate action, without regard for ethics or laws. Building such a team is the critical competency of an executive. The result is a highly effective and resilient organization that is capable of anything from fraud to torture.
"The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around."
Depending on your OS you may need to log on to root to edit this file. If wikileaks.org ever changes its IP address you may need to update this entry. When the injunction is lifted DNS starts working again, the entry should be removed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/technology/7250916.stm
...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.
The court order doesn't seem to say why exactly the order was given. It's not even clear whether the order is because the statements are libelous, or because they are in breach of trade secrecy. Maybe the statements are simply false?
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
The key to silencing the truth is to silence it BEFORE it spreads.
If I'm a corrupt employer and I suspect one of my employees is about to blow the whistle, it's not too late to either overtly bribe him into silence, blackmail him into silence, transfer him to a cushy job that doesn't have any access to secrets so he'll see the wisdom of not burning his employer, or if those don't work, hiring a hit man. I'll tell the hit man he gets paid double if the death is ruled accidental.
Once the information hits the media, it's pretty much too late for direct action. About all you can do then is use indirect methods then later quietly and permanently get rid of the people who have seen the damning evidence.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You know, this one.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yeah, those idiots! :rollseyes:
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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.
No seriously, do. Anyone have the IP addresses of the wikileaks.org servers, lets all add a records to our own dns's.
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
Would the court have enjoined distribution of the New York Times if it had published the info? Not likely. See NYT v. US, 403 US 713 ("Pentagon Papers" case). Wikileaks has a good appeal to the 9th Circuit, and is represented by California legal counsel. Watch the sparks fly.
The case was brought by lawyers working for a Swiss bank
A controversial website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the US.
Wikileaks.org, as it is known, was cut off from the internet following a California court ruling, the site says.
The case was brought by a Swiss bank after "several hundred" documents were posted about its offshore activities. Apparently offshore mirrors are still available.
They're not so freaky. They blow all the time. We had ours burn out spectacularly two years ago. And when I was at NASA we managed to do a power spike that took out a half dozen relay stations from Ohio to Tennessee with a rather spectacular failure in a wind tunnel, not to mention what it did to our own facilities.
im sure the bank owners have ppl to do there dirty work for them so the ultra rich will stay rich please stop blaming Bush for dumb crap like this im sure the ultra rich left is who really got the court order
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?
Yes, it was a freak accident.
A mysterious computer room fire (as opposed to a scheduled, well publicized one) happens, and suddenly everyone who was within a hundred miles of Woodstock gets blamed. Typical! "Ay-yup. Musta been freaks what done it. Damn hippie-freaks."
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
That's brilliant. It's a Good Thing DNS was made to route around outages :) I salute you!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
is a real long time, friend. I used the term "oozing" to indicate that I'm thinking way off in the future.
Of course, given the proper crisis engineering, the viscosity of the ooze could be altered...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The internet also includes the nodes between these tubes, but why do people keep quoting that, as if it points to idiocy?
It is an acceptable description of the essence of the internet, in layman's terms, which is what it was meant to be.
A car is also a seat-box that moves.
The bank documents are up at http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~mflaschen3/banned/julius-baer-stalking.zip . Enjoy (or at least piss JB off).
It's called fascism. It's happened before, and it's happening again, only this time it's all dressed up in a trendy suit, and listens to "cool" music, and it will take our site down in a split second if it wants to. Why? Because it can. That's the essential MO of fascism.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
This is why we can't have nice things.
One of those developers responds here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRyk5QyYGU8
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
...if it haven't been for you, I would not have noticed Wikileaks and it's mirror sites. Much interesting stuff there. I've also sent them my appreciation via this link:
http://www.juliusbaer.com/global/en/contact/contactform/Pages/default.aspx
Curious that a computer room wouldn't have been protected by halon or inergen http://fm200.biz/inergen.htm systems
Copied from the website:
"If you support Wikileaks, back our defense fund by emailing supporters@sunshinepress.org with your pledge!"
I've already Paypaled?(grammar nazi help needed) my pittance but we might wait to be sure they can accept those type of payments.
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11