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.

Comments

Sensible enough to include but warn

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Julian Assange is a KGB Agent

[Anonymous Coward]

Dang it, where's my "mod inciteful". All I have is insightful.

WikiLeaks is pretty good at trolling.

[wiredog]

Trump backers realize they've been played as WikiLeaks fails to deliver October surprise

Re:The Internet

[Kierthos]

But if he's got an important leak, why didn't he make it? Instead, they were hawking books. He's turning into an infomercial.

Don't get me wrong, I think if he's got an important leak to make that would affect the election, I think we should know about it. The problem is, Trump is hiding a bunch of shit as well, and that information could affect the election, and Assange is basically giving him a free pass. (For the record, I consider both major party candidates to be terrible. But Trump is getting away with all kinds of things that would sink any other candidate because the media is in love with ratings.)

And hell, I honestly consider Trump to be the more dangerous candidate when it comes to a free and open press. Hell, he's said he wants to make it easier to sue publications if they publish something he doesn't like.

Re:This is smearing

[110010001000]

Uh, what is misrepresentative here? The website hosts files that contain malware. Just because you expected it did, doesn't make it not a threat. Do you think journalists who are downloading the files are viewing them in a VM sandbox? Most likely they are now infected with malware. If you visit Wikileaks then you are likely going there to get these files. Most people who read those files are going to get infected because most people aren't going to take precautions.

Re:Whose side is he on?

[Daetrin]

I was in my teens for Reagan and the start of the first Bush administration, so my memory of what was said about them is pretty fuzzy. But i don't recall a big deal being made about nuclear war being made, and that certainly wasn't my biggest concern during either the election for Bush 1's 2nd term or either of Bush 2's terms.

But Trump has said that he's okay with using nuclear weapons offensively:
https://thinkprogress.org/9-te...

Trump has also said that he won't guarantee defending our allies, which is potentially a very destabilizing action:
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyli...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...

He said during the first debate that attacking an Iranian ship would not start a war. (To be fair, doing so wouldn't _definitely_ start a war, but almost identical actions have been considered acts of war in the past and could easily be considered so again, so saying that it definitely wouldn't is 100% wrong.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

And i can find any number of references for the off the wall stuff Trump has posted on twitter at 3am, in fact there has been analysis presented here on slashdot about the emotional tones of his tweets then vs when his staff is in charge:
https://politics.slashdot.org/...

Now normally i wouldn't say "this person acts unhinged on twitter, therefore they'll end civilization." However he has stated himself that he's willing to cause turmoil among our allies, which will lead to politically unstable situations, he's said himself that he's willing to preemptively use nuclear weapons, and he's said things that seem to indicate he doesn't know what is and is not an act of war.

If you combine that with the kind of temper and tendency to get unhinged when he feels he's been attacked or insulted that he's demonstrated both in real life and in his late night twitter sessions, i feel that it's reasonable to be very concerned.