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."

Comments

But why?

[jrothwell97]

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.

Re:But why?

[utnapistim]

I think it was a bad move on the part of whoever did the attack, if their intention was censorship: it only created more publicity for the documents.

Re:But why?

[morgan_greywolf]

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.

Re:But why?

[Anonymous Coward]

It generates more free publicity and advertising for the bank's tax-sheltering and money-laundering services, with the reassuring message that the U.S. courts are standing behind you should you patronize aforesaid bank.

Meanwhile Wikileaks gets to have it's operating premises reinforced, play victim, garner more support, funds, etc.

So you see, it's a win-win strategy all around. What, me cynical?

Re:But why?

[D-Fly]

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.

Restraining order?

[somersault]

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

Insult + Injury

[cthulu_mt]

Great idea. On top of a DDoS attack lets add the Slashdot effect. I can smell the smoke pouring off their servers.

To those behind the attacks...

[Loibisch]

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.

Re:To those behind the attacks...

[petermgreen]

the /. effect is WAY overrated, if you are suffering from it you either have big file downloads, really shitty hosting (think home DSL/cable or similar) or a badly designed dynamic site (this last one is probablly the most common).

Must be doing someting right...

[TripMaster Monkey]

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.

Re:Must be doing someting right...

[PopeRatzo]

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.

If this were an episode of 24, they'd kidnap WikiLeaks' daughter, too.

Yawn

[4D6963]

Wake me up when the anchor of a ship accidentally cuts every cable around the WikiLeaks server buildings..

Winner: Counter-productive move of the year

[MosesJones]

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.

Re:Winner: Counter-productive move of the year

[TripMaster Monkey]

Could the people leaked about on WikiLeaks really be this dumb?

Fortunately, yes, they can, and it seems they are. Not 'dumb' per se, mind you, but operating without any idea of how things work in this day and age, when any information that finds its way onto the Internet is effectively immortal, and any attempts to suppress that information only succeed in calling even more attention to it.

There's no way to silence the truth directly anymore in this new medium. Indirect methods, however, like repeating a lie loudly and often enough, can still be effective.

Re:Winner: Counter-productive move of the year

[mOdQuArK!]

There's no way to silence the truth directly anymore in this new medium. Indirect methods, however, like repeating a lie loudly and often enough, can still be effective.

Actually, the simplest way to "silence: the truth is to drown it in misinformation (one of the applications of the indirect methods you referred to). Once nobody can tell what the truth is, and what the lies are, then someone trying to hide the truth can breath a little easier.

Modern-day PR hacks are really good at this kind of thing, Third World repressive regimes are still learning how to do it effectively.

If it can help...

[this great guy]

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.org
;; ANSWER SECTION:
wikileaks.org. 864 IN A 88.80.13.160
wikileaks.org. 864 IN A 87.106.162.82
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
wikileaks.org. 198841 IN NS ns3.everydns.net.
wikileaks.org. 198841 IN NS ns2.everydns.net.
wikileaks.org. 198841 IN NS ns4.everydns.net.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
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)

Re:Doesn't necessarily have to be big business/ go

[CHESTER COPPERPOT]

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.

This is What Freenet Was Made For

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:This is What Freenet Was Made For

[Corwn of Amber]

Yeah, but there are problems with FreeNet :

1/ It's slow
2/ No one uses it
3/ No one uses it because it's so slow
4/ It's so slow because no one uses it
5/ It's not preinstalled on all computers
6/ Its installation is as much jumping through hoops as a first use of Windows Vista

So yeah, backups on FreeNet is a good idea, but hosting the main site? Not if they want to be acessed sometimes.

I'd rather d/l the full archive off The Pirate Bay or Mininova, though. A lifetime of reading about "why all the systems should all be completely transparent to any one in the general public".

Clouds on the Cayman tax heaven REPOSTED HERE

[Anonymous Coward]

Clouds on the Cayman tax heaven From Wikileaks

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.

Privacy for all or nothing

[tjstork]

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.

http://gaddbiwdftapglkq.onion

[giminy]

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 ;-).