How Did Wikileaks Do It?

grassy_knoll writes "Related to the Wikileaks video recently released and discussed here, the NY Times reports: 'Somehow — it will not say how — WikiLeaks found the necessary computer time to decrypt a graphic video, released Monday, of a United States Army assault in Baghdad in 2007 that left 12 people dead, including two employees of the news agency Reuters. The video has been viewed more than two million times on YouTube, and has been replayed hundreds of times in television news reports.' The article is light on details; what encryption algorithm was used? Was this a brute force attack? Did someone pass the decryption keys to Wikileaks along with the video? Something else?"

Comments

It *was* a bruce force attack

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Was this a brute force attack?

I have seen the video and I can positively confirm that it was indeed a brute force attack.

Conspriacy theories

[vmxeo]

They used a farm of PS3s running Linux to crack the encryption. This is why Sony, acting in behalf of the US DOD, removed the "Other OS" installation option and randomly bricked consoles through last week's firmware update, (albeit too late to prevent the video from being released). Also, as documented in FCC filings, Apple's iPad has a secret built-in front camera used to spy on the American people to find the person who leaked the data. That's why the wifi connection is so poor, most of it is saturated sending live video to DHS. Finally. Microsoft is also involved somehow. I'm not sure how, but I'm sure the OOXML file format is somehow involved.

Re:Not just "how", but "if" they did it

[The MAZZTer]

If someone finds out how they did it, would they it as a WikiLeak?!?!

Re:maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

You almost lost me. Thanks for the car analogy!