Are Wikileaks Servers In a Nuclear Bunker?

An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian has a two page spread on the background of some of the Wikileaks people, the Wikileaks scheme for "an open-source democratic intelligence agency" and the possible location of its secret servers — an abandoned US nuclear weapons base at Greenham Common and a radar station in Kent. "The Kent bunker is deep underground and supposed to survive 30 days after a nuclear strike.""

Comments

Re:If it's true

[daveschroeder]

It's not "WikiLeaks" that has the funding; it's the people who have set up WikiLeaks. From the article (which I know is mandatory not to read):

Laurie is an international consultant on internet security. Earlier he set up a business that bought two military bunkers, at the abandoned US base at Greenham Common, and at an old RAF radar station in Kent. His company rents them out to firms and banks who want to protect their servers from attack. The Kent bunker is deep underground: "The radar operators were supposed to survive 30 days after a nuclear strike."

Also, by virtue of WikiLeaks being here, it really isn't protected significantly more than it would be in any conventional secure datacenter. But it sure sounds cool, doesn't it?

The funny part of the article is that the online version ends with:

Laurie cautions that Wikileaks' vaunted encryption is not completely unbreakable. Codebreakers such as the US National Security Agency could prob

And then, nothing. Just a little mistake at the Guardian, but still kind of funny. ;-)

On a more serious note, the reason why WikiLeaks' DNS provider in the US was shut down was, well, because they didn't show up for court. At all.

For some more on WikiLeaks:

Court Issues Injunction Against Wikileaks.org
A Word from Wikileaks

Looks like WikiLeaks doesn't want anything negative said about their operation. Which is fairly ironic, if you stop to think for a moment...

Re:If it's true

[Richard_at_work]

They don't afford such premises - the Kent facility is a separate business called 'The Bunker' specialising in physically secure data centre facilities and is open to anyone who can pay the hosting charges there, and has been running since 2004. A ready made cold war bunker is a cheap alternative to a custom made building elsewhere - it was designed to be secure from the outset, and was available cheap when the MoD (Ministry of Defence) sold off many of its old assets over the past two decades.

Background link

Wow the guardian is gullible

[blowdart]

Well the Guardian isn't known for fact checking.

Currently wikileaks is at http://88.80.13.160, which belongs to "prq Inet - Access" based in Sweden. Greenham Common itself has been returned to civilian use, and most of it is being turned back into countryside and held in trust. The missile silos are being turning into a historical monument. There is a small business park, which does have a company providing secure hosting in one of the old bunkers (which I guess is sort of "an abandoned US nuclear weapons base at Greenham Common", but not quite, saying abandoned gives the idea of secret hackers stringing ethernet at night whilst no-one sees). The same company also hosts in an old radar station in Kent, at, Marshborough Road, Sandwich.

However the UK is not a good choice for hosting this sort of thing; our libel laws are open to all sorts of abuse these days, there's a tendency right now for individuals to sue in the UK high court for libel over publications which aren't even available in the UK, so called "libel holidays". Whilst secure hosting is all very nice marketing speak when the laws of the land will conspire against you then the security of your hosting is secondary; after all, really, what are they worried about? A company hiring a rogue agent to fire bomb the hosting? Most hosting facilities have large fences, gates and security, and a bunch are undergound. Being ex-military land doesn't improve security that much.

Nuclear bunkers obsolete

[tjstork]

I thought all the nuclear bunkers were built to survive a conventional a-bomb attack in an era where the CEP was so high that a miss was likely. Secrecy was a part of it too. The idea was to not get hit at all, survive a near miss from a small bomb in case they did find you. But, once the H-Bombs came of age, all of that was made obsolete. I mean, some of the USA test h-bomb shots in the pacific blew entire islands off of the map, and the Russians actually built much larger h-bombs that that.

The whole bunker thing is a joke.

Re:Nuclear bunkers obsolete

[mk_is_here]

But practically it was not H-bombs which defeat the bunkers, it's the shaped charge and nowadays kinetic penetrators.
It's cheaper, easier to handle, and more efficient. No generals wish to use H-bomb against immobile tanks and personnel inside a bunker.

Re:Nuclear bunkers obsolete

[Marillion]

While much of that is true, it's also true that much of the durability of Cheyenne Mountain is predicated on the statistical probability that a missile aimed at the mountain would actually hit the mountain. I believe they calculated a 80% chance that a missile would miss the target by far enough that the complex would be able still serve it's mission - launch a retaliatory strike against those who attacked. All that it served was to provide enough of a threat that the Soviet Union would think twice before launching a first strike.

Re:Nuclear bunkers obsolete

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a few racks in said Kent Bunker... There are many reasons to put servers down there:

1. They have complete power backup facilities underground in the Bunker, making it very difficult to tamper with, vandalise or otherwise be exposed to the elements.

2. The Bunker is fully EMP shielded.

3. The facility is very understated and in the middle of nowhere.

4. Access even to your own equipment is closely controlled. You can't just turn up, you have to book in in advance, supply the proper id and even then you are escorted the whole time on one site. So sabotage and equipment theft must be virtually impossible.

5. Top notch techies who know their stuff and have good command of the English language (the number of times other dc's have had me on the end of a phone to someone who can barely speak English is ridiculous).

5. It's not in London, but not too far away.

Well thats just my 2p. It's a great facility - filling up fast - get em while they're hot!

M from F.

Re:If it's true

[russotto]

On a more serious note, the reason why WikiLeaks' DNS provider in the US was shut down was, well, because they didn't show up for court. At all.

Nor were they invited to. They received notice of the hearing, by email, hours before it happened. This wasn't a matter of ignoring a summons; they were intentionally excluded. Baer and Dynadot stipulated to a bunch of stuff so Dynadot could get itself off the hook, Baer requested a few more things (including the nuking of the A records), and the judge agreed -- without Wikileaks input.

Any single location is vulnerable

[presidenteloco]

Especially if known about.

A better solution for information safety (preservation) is a combination of the following attributes:
-Widely Distributed
-Massively Redundant
-Strongly Encrypted
-Rewrappable by newer encryption
-Fragmented with self-seeking assembly
-Self-healing (checks that enough copies of self exist and makes more if not)
-Autonomously Mobile - Self-seeks newer and more reliable storage using a map of internet hosts with stats

That's orders of magnitude better than one bunker to which the electricity or datapipes can be cut.

Bunker Schmunker.....

[IHC Navistar]

What's the benefit? If Wikileaks did have their servers in a decomissioned nuclear bunker, then the government would have a list of possible locations that it would be in the for of a list of decommisioned bunkers. If the founders were as smart as they claim to be, they would hide it in plain sight. I mean, what wold seem like a more probable place to hide a "hot-button" web site that strives to make life difficult for Big Brother?

Location A: Decommissioned nuclear bunker.

Location B: Decommissioned Atlas missile silo.

Location C: Underneath a chicken coop in rural Oklahoma?

Re:If it's true

[jhylkema]

On a more serious note, the reason why WikiLeaks' DNS provider in the US was shut down was, well, because they didn't show up for court. At all.

Actually, it's worse than that. WikiLeaks didn't show up for court because they couldn't. Bank Julius Baer ambushed them by failing to serve them with a complaint and moved ex parte for an injunction against their DNS provider. In fact, they still have not been properly served. See, if they get served, then they can retain counsel, answer the complaint, oppose the motion for injunction, make the bank prove up their alleged "irreparable harm," and other inconvenient matters. Suit and injunction is the preferred route.

I predict that BJB's attorneys and the judge that went along with this idiocy are going to get the smackdown on appeal.