WikiLeaks' Anonymous Leak Submission System Is Back After Nearly 5 Years

Sparrowvsrevolution writes: On Friday, WikiLeaks announced that it has finally relaunched a beta version of its leak submission system after a 4.5 year hiatus. That file-upload site, which once served as a central tool in WIkiLeaks' leak-collecting mission, runs on the anonymity software Tor to allow uploaders to share documents and tips while protecting their identity from any network eavesdropper, and even from WikiLeaks itself. In 2010 the original submission system went down amid infighting between WikiLeaks' leaders and several of its disenchanted staffers, including several who left to create their own soon-to-fail project called OpenLeaks. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says that the new system, which was delayed by his legal troubles and the banking industry blockade against the group, is the final result of "four competing research projects" WikiLeaks launched in recent years. He adds that it has several less-visible submission systems in addition to the one it's now revealed. "Currently, we have one public-facing and several private-facing submission systems in operation, cryptographically, operationally and legally secured with national security sourcing in mind," Assange writes.

Comments

This is to annoy

[Anonymous Coward]

the guy who doesn't like comments in the headline....

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it really submit to them?

And wouldn't most of the major intelligence agencies want to watch that inbox, specifically?

Re:So...

[TheCarp]

um of course they would, that is why so much protection is built around the process.

That was one of the things that Manning talked about with the snitch Adrian Lamo; that the process was designed to blind wikileaks themselves from direct knowledge of the leaker's identity; because it would be a liability to everyone involved.

By not knowing, they have to take other measures to carefully validate leaked information since they can't rely on the credentials of a source. Its obviously a series of trade offs.

However, its really the only viable way to operate, since they know they can never ensure total security, the best thing they can do to protect their sources is to actually not know themselves.

Re: So...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how it works. How do you, as submitter, know that your submission actually makes it to WikiLeaks, and how do you know it's really WikiLeaks that it goes to?

Re: So...

[TheCarp]

How do you know anything?

Have you reflected much on trusting trust? http://www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/...

At some level you have to trust someone. Basically you "know" because wikileaks says so and you either trust that they know what they are talking about and telling the truth or you don't. They certainly have the technical chops to implement this sort of thing.

At some level you will never know, at some level, you take in info. If you go to submit and its not over tor, or the address of the service isn't publically published by a known source.... lots of things could tip you off but, in the end, its impossible to know for sure....but hopefully that is better than the alternative.

Thank god they're using Tor

[alzoron]

Don't worry guys, our anomynity is protected by software originally developed the United States Navy and funded by the United States Government. Keep on divulging all your secrets.

Re:Thank god they're using Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to call you an idiot, but then I realized I'm using protocols developed and funded by US Government... Is tinfoil also a product of the USG?

Re:Thank god they're using Tor

[bug1]

Don't worry guys, our numbers are calculated by computers, originally funded by the Ballistic Research Facility of the United States Army. Keep on calculating all your numbers.

Re:Thank god they're using Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they will put the cloudl flare honey pot in front of it too. Its not like any torrent sites have been stolen shortly after that happened.

Re:Thank god they're using Tor

[circletimessquare]

yes, it was originally intended for spies and dissidents in regimes hostile to the free flow of information to share information

that the us government is plugged into it from the ground floor doesn't change that fact

since then

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

In 2004, the Naval Research Laboratory released the code for Tor under a free licence, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) began funding Dingledine and Mathewson to continue its development.[20]

In December 2006, Dingledine, Mathewson and five others founded The Tor Project, a Massachusetts-based 501(c)(3) research-education nonprofit organization responsible for maintaining Tor.[23] The EFF acted as The Tor Project's fiscal sponsor in its early years, and early financial supporters of The Tor Project included the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau, Internews, Human Rights Watch, the University of Cambridge, Google, and Netherlands-based Stichting.net.[24][25][26][27][28]

ah yes, those great crushers of freedom: the EFF, human rights watch, and now wikileaks

i'm certain the NSA has enough sniffing going on on enough tor exit nodes to kinda sorta figure out who you might be if it was important enough to them

but the point is simply that without tor, that ability to sniff still applies, but even more so. tor isn't bulletproof. it is but one more tool in your toolbox for cloaking and anonymity. combine it with other tools and methods and it is quite useful

tor is simply a good deal, not perfect. what is?

but if you are in moscow or beijing or tehran, and you want to divulge something nasty about those governments, you're certainly free to not use tor, because apparently only washington dc hurts people to keep secrets?

Re:Thank god they're using Tor

[invictusvoyd]

They should call it Leakyweaks

Re:Thank god they're using Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had mod points left, because you're being a colossal idiot.

The Government is pretty damn big. Is it so much of a surprise to you that there are separate branches of the govt actively working against each other?
The people funding Tor need it, and they aren't the same as the people trying to scare people away from or break Tor.

Re:Thank god they're using Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm certain the NSA has enough sniffing going on on enough tor exit nodes to kinda sorta figure out who you might be if it was important enough to them

Sniffing on the exit nodes does not let you "kinda sorta figure out who you might be". Also, Tor is open source. Could you point us to the specific lines of code that make you easily trackable? Given your confidence, that should be trivial.

Re:Thank god they're using Tor

[circletimessquare]

sniffing one node won't help

sniffing a lot of nodes won't help

sniffing ALL of them (or, in practice, at least the great majority) let's you do timing, target, and content analysis: taking the entire firehose of tor exit node packets, inspecting them, profiling them, and drawing the connections

this is obviously not remotely doable for almost all organizations in the world. except an organization with the reach, resources, and abilities of the NSA. would you really be surprised if the NSA was actively seeking and tracking almost all tor exit nodes in the world? i wonder how many tor nodes the NSA just flat out started in the first place on their own initiative to guarantee a sizable chunk of awareness of what is going in and out

such a difficult effort will get you some useful information. not everything, and not all the time. but you *will* find out some interesting things, some of the time

thus, "kinda sorta figure out who you might be"

Re:Thank god they're using Tor

[d33tah]

you *will* find out some interesting things, some of the time

This sounds like MUCH better a deal than clearnet to me.

Re:Thank god they're using Tor

[circletimessquare]

it is

which is why you should use tor if you're trying to hide something

just don't expect to be completely foolproof if you think you would attract the attention of something like the NSA

ideally, throw in another tool/ methodology, and change them up

Re:Thank god they're using Tor

[davydagger]

the Internet itself was a DARPA project for its first two decades of existance. Better stop using that as well, just to be sure...

The fact the goverment funds it doesn't mean the government has a backdoor. After all, the most talented hackers and programmers are notorious for having ethics the rest of the proffesional world lacks when it comes to corruption.

Speaking of clearnet, that too is known to be tapped by the government. I wonder what your alternative is?

Re:Thank god they're using Tor

[meta-monkey]

And your transistors were invented by a eugenicist. You're using a computer. Why do you hate black people?

Re:Thank god they're using Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

And your transistors were invented by a eugenicist. You're using a computer. Why do you hate black people?

It's not that I hate black people, it's just that I think they shouldn't bother trying to play ice hockey, that's all.

He won't like that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Will he.

Small world

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm expecting some hot leaks about the Ecuadorian government any day now.

Re:Small world

[martin-boundary]

Don't hold your breath. I've been waiting for some hot grits from Natalie Portman on here for 10 years now, and got nothing, let alone hot pics of Natalie leaking :-/

Australian Legislation

[MrKaos]

I did an analysis of the Australian 2014 National Security Amendments Legislation back in October 2014 and wrote to the politicians to try to stop it. I think that it is relevant here because, well frankly, Australian seems unfortunately blessed with apathetic right wing morons that it makes the construction and passing of such legislation possible and that sometimes they become a template for countries less blessed with these morons.

This legislation contains specific amendments directed at intelligence officers leaking information in light of wikileaks. Any legal opportunity for officers to leak corruption or criminal acts is now a criminal act in Australia and I would imagine that the compartmentalisation of information would allow leakers to be identified.

I am uncertain if such amendments would be constitutional in the US/UK or Canada, but they are law here now. Clearly the doctrine of fighting domestic enemies that corrupt governments, like cancer, from within will no longer be tolerated and the wheels are in motion to close that legality. My interpretation of the legislation is that the ability for these agents to do the right thing to expose criminal acts and corruption will be met with the destruction of their careers and gaol (jail) time.

I'm certain that the portions of the law that can be made legal in other Echelon (5 I's) countries, will be as soon as the constitutional implications are understood. I hope that the mechanisms that wikileaks has created is enough to protect them. I hope there is an opportunity for UK/US and Canadian citizens to stop similar legislation from passing into law in those countries.

If there was any doubt that we were on a slippery slope before the legislations I've read passed into law, then right now Australia's ass is wet and is sliding uncontrollably to being a full blown police state.

We need a replacement for tor that's hardened

[Cafe Alpha]

against the NSA, if that's possible.

It may not be possible, since the NSA could just buy themselves most of the bandwidth on any onion-router or similar system, and as long as they have all of the links in any connection, the connection is revealed. And as people have pointed out, watching all of the nodes gives them the paths.

Also if they compromise a master key, that's another great attack that I haven't heard discussed before.

Belts and braces

[godel_56]

If you really need to communicate anonymously, buy a cheap, second hand laptop for cash, wipe the HD, then communicate using the Tails OS and someone else's Wi-Fi, preferably nowhere near where you live.

Oh, and stay out of the range of any security cameras and number plate scanners when you leave the house, and leave your cell phone at home.

Not necessarily.

[SharpFang]

They can always enable an alternate submission method that permits full authentication of the submitter - with full understanding that their safety cannot be assured. Sometimes people are brave - they want given thing to be known, even at cost of own life or freedom.

So - leave the choice to the submitter; anonymous, to be possibly verified by Wikileaks, or open, verifiable by reputation of the known submitter.