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Julian Assange: All That Malware On Wikileaks Isn't a Big Deal (vice.com)
WikiLeaks celebrates its 10th anniversary today. At a press conference, its editor Julian Assange hinted that Wikileaks could soon disclose more things about the U.S. election. Making use of the occasion, Motherboard asked Assange about the malware that Wikileaks website contains. To which, Assange responded (via Motherboard): âoeThe [Hillary] Clinton campaign has been going around saying 'don't read Wikileaks, because there's malware,'" Assange said in response to a general question about malware on the site from Motherboard. Talking specifically about malicious files that were included within a recent dump of emails from Turkey, Assange emphasised that there wasn't an issue for users who just visited the site, and that people needed to download the files themselves. "However this same risk exists for most '.exe' or '.doc' files downloaded elsewhere from the internet or received by email. As time goes by we flag documents to alert readers," a print-out given to journalists at the press conference reads. Assange even thought that the presence of malware itself was noteworthy. "There was malware sent to [the ruling Turkish party] AKP, either from criminals or from state attacks on the AKP. That's extremely interesting," he said.
Hillary's campaign would love it if everyone is too afraid to read Wikileaks.
Don't put words in his mouth. He didn't say 'no big deal'. The gist of what he said was more that, for security researchers and people interested in this sort of thing, having the malware available for analysis within document dumps can prove a fruitful line of enquiry, and people downloading and extracting these dumps are unlikely to be the mouthbreathing 'hurr durr an exe gotta run it see what it does' idiots.
Doc files, I can see some merit in providing two dumps, one with any autoplay macros neutered. Or at least, putting a massive great warning reminding researchers to take care.
So I shouldn't hang around the web, because I might stumble across a site with malware in some ad, flash code or whatever. I shouldn't connect my "things" to the web because they might become part of a botnet, quite easily apparently.
Can we get some sense in here and agree that Assange is in his right to tell you to disregard obvious attempts to discredit wikileaks before an important leak??
We don't like click-baity, misleading, and misrepresentative headlines here. They're disingenuous and you should be ashamed for having snuck this one past the editors. It should come as a surprise to no one that the mail spools of gov't officials would contain malware, because they're just bound to be targets for spearphishers. To people who can manage to examine files without uncontrollably clicking on them until they execute, this malware poses *zero* threat. ...and yet here this headline and article is, trying to make it sound like WikiLeaks has been in some way *infected* with malware that is a danger to visitors of the site, and that Assange is improperly and unprofessionally downplaying that threat.
Whatever Clinton is paying you, it's not worth it. Your integrity is worth more than money.
Assange made it clear he'll carry on with the leaks over the next month, so I'm not sure it really means much he didn't today.
Whether any (a) will actually be of substance, and (b) will affect someone who, frankly, has had so many BS allegations made against her that if she was found with a dead hooker in her closet tomorrow we'd be wondering who planted it there, remains to be seen. Her opponents have apparently never read the story of the boy who cried wolf.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
No, editorial review is what would inttoduce bias. They're not journalists, and they're not really activists, except in the narrow realm of information trandparency - they're a data source. Sure, there's a lot of noise with the signal, but thats why other organisations that *are* journalists filter through it and provide editorialised opinions on it.
Don't make wikileaks into something its not - we need an open data dump more than we need someone selectively picking the facts that support their position and rolling them up into an article. We've already got plenty of those.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Did they ever release the Bank of America stuff? Pretty sure they said they were going to release that. Amounted to fuck all. Zero credibility. An organisation that purports to be what Wikileaks purports to be should not have psychopathic narcissists like Assange smearing their noxious 'personality' over everything.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Not disclosing information irrelevant information that harms innocent people who are only tangentially related to the leak is not bias, it's responsible and ethical
It's not about who cares about you or not. Trump has made it pretty clear for most of his adult life that he doesn't care about anyone beyond perhaps his immediate family (wives excluded). It's about who actually seems to have a fucking clue. The man cannot even make it through a 90 minute debate without being baited into saying idiotic and offensive things.
In some ways, he reminds me of Napoleon III, another populist (though one of more demonstrable ability) from the not-so-distant past whose ego allowed him to be manipulated by a much cannier or more cynical operator in the form of Otto von Bismarck.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Assange lost all credibility when he played his partisan hand this session. He is no longer democratizing information, he is selectively choosing information to further his "side" because he has a grudge. He blew it. Someone else needs to take the helm.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested