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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.
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.
My blog
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
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.
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
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,
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
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/technology/7250916.stm
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
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.
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?
...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