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WikiLeaks To Its Supporters: 'Stop Taking Down the US Internet, You Proved Your Point' (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: The Internet took a turn for the worst this morning, when large parts of the DNS network were brought down by a massive distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) targeting DNS provider Dyn. If you couldn't access Amazon, Twitter, and a host of other large sites and online services earlier today, this was why. Now, if a couple of additional tweets are to be believed, it appears supporters of WikiLeaks are responsible for this large scale DDoS attack on Dynamic Network Services Inc's Dyn DNS service. WikiLeaks is alleging that a group of its supporters launched today's DDoS attack in retaliation for the Obama administration using its influence to push the Ecuadorian government to limit Assange's internet access. Another earlier tweet reassures supporters that Mr. Assange is still alive, which -- along with a photo of heavily armed police posted this morning -- implies that he may have been (or may still be) in danger, and directly asks said supporters to stop the attack. WikiLeaks published this tweet a little after 5PM: "Mr. Assange is still alive and WikiLeaks is still publishing. We ask supporters to stop taking down the US internet. You proved your point." It was followed by: "The Obama administration should not have attempted to misuse its instruments of state to stop criticism of its ruling party candidate."

24 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. Ruling Party by Black+Parrot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    LoL. Someone doesn't have the most basic understanding of how the USA works.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    1. Re:Ruling Party by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And that someone is the previous repliers. We do have a ruling party - the rich.

  2. If the point was ... by quax · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... that they are a bunch of jerks. Point taken.

    1. Re:If the point was ... by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There's no proof that it has anything to do with Wikileaks, but in a world of IoT devices with no thought toward security, anyone who cares to do so can mount DDOS with the power of a national entity.

      What's the point of doing what Assange and Wikileaks have been doing without any moral position? He isn't helping his own case.

  3. Doesn't really matter who fired the shot by Mal-2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It doesn't really matter who was firing the shot, so much as all those loaded, pwn3d weapons remaining in the wild that can be pressed into service again and again. This is not the first such event, it's at least the third. It won't be the last either, and the only way I can see to stop it is to permanently dismantle the IoT until it can be rebuilt from the ground up with security in mind. If security is too hard for the poor vendors and end users, then don't rebuild it. The health of the network as a whole is far more important than any single purpose for which it is used -- besides which, the devices can't be trusted to do their jobs anyhow once they've been pwn3d.

    Make the vendors take them back in a recall -- could be a service recall in which they are made field-upgradable, or if they're hard-coded then they get the Galaxy Note 7 treatment as the hazards they are. Those who won't take them back should be cited under FCC Part 15 rules and have their certifications revoked and fines levied. It is easily provable that the devices are "causing harmful interference". It's time to get them off the network. Like yesterday.

    --
    How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
    1. Re:Doesn't really matter who fired the shot by yuriklastalov · · Score: 3, Informative

      How do you figure? He's talking about all the "Internet of Things" garbage Sillicon Valley is so in love these days. You know, those little spy devices they get you to pay for and then leverage for data collection?

      Anyway, these smart lights, hubs, thermostats, toasters, etc., are wildly insecure, to the point of some even having an open telnet port with root access! So we have all these fancy networked gewgaws which get pwned by hackers and used to DDoS anyone they feel like.

      To be perfectly clear: These devices didn't exist as little as four years ago, so banning them from the internet would not in any way reduce its functionality. Other than that a bunch of rich nerds will have to remember to turn their fucking thermostats to the right setting before they go to work, nothing of value will be lost.

      The Internet of Things is a solution looking for a problem and a way for sleazy tech companies to fleece the consumer. That it has ended up being co-opted by (other) scumbags to do their (differently) evil bidding is just one more nail in the coffin.

  4. Re: Wikileaks is a toxic organisation. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wikileaks publishes information they are given, FYI. They're not a hacking group.

  5. Equal amounts? by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wikileaks hadn't been pushing Trump leaks as hard as Clinton leaks. Now its supports are trying to take down US infrastructure. I used to think that Wikileaks is a neutral organisation promoting government transparency, but not any more. I kind of feel that they are up to no good.

    What do you propose? Should Wikileaks hold off on Clinton until they have an equal amount on Trump?

    Is that your definition of neutral? That they must expose corruption in equal amounts for both sides?

    1. Re:Equal amounts? by fufufang · · Score: 4, Informative

      Wikileaks hadn't been pushing Trump leaks as hard as Clinton leaks. Now its supports are trying to take down US infrastructure. I used to think that Wikileaks is a neutral organisation promoting government transparency, but not any more. I kind of feel that they are up to no good.

      What do you propose? Should Wikileaks hold off on Clinton until they have an equal amount on Trump?

      Is that your definition of neutral? That they must expose corruption in equal amounts for both sides?

      How about not sensationalising everything they publish? How about not making political statements against Clinton? They can leak stuff without appearing to be political, you know.

    2. Re: Equal amounts? by Shane_Optima · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Why is attacking the Hillary campaign a bad thing? We now know they corrupted the democratic process in the primary to deliver her the nomination. And we know from the latest Wikileaks release that Clinton has been openly talking to Wall street about the fact that she's been routinely lying in public, saying what is necessary to get elected.

      Why are you attacking someone for attacking this loathsome woman? She and her campaign deserve to be attacked. I think it would've been fantastic if she could've been forced to step down and give someone else a chance (not Bernie, or at least not necessarily, just anyone decent the Democrats can shuffle into place quickly.) to take on Trump. Barring that, I think pushing Johnson or Stein into double digits would be fantastic. I even think that would be a more important goal, long term, than sacrificing literally every shred of dignity and concern for the truth and the future of our democracy just to stop some shock-jock version of George W. Bush (i.e. someone who is almost certain, at the end of the day, just a lazy puppet.)

      Assange never claimed to be objective, but as a purported newsman he doesn't need to. News organizations all over the world have taken an opinion in this race. Assange isn't pro-Trump; he's just anti-Clinton. As am I.

    3. Re: Equal amounts? by TellarHK · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They didn't corrupt the process. I was a Bernie supporter from the start, and caucused for him at the neighborhood level and served half a day as an alternate at the county level until learning that there wasn't any reason to be there that day. There were procedural messes, particularly in my state of Nevada at the final statewide convention. That was a mess, and a disaster on all sorts of levels, but it wouldn't have changed the final outcome.

      Did the people in the leadership of the party have a preference? Yes. Did most of the party know that going in? Absolutely, and so did Bernie. Hillary had spent eight years trying to build up her credentials and preparing for this run, and she absolutely stacked the deck in her own favor by courting superdelegates. Does that sting, as a Bernie supporter that sees his preferred candidate on the losing end? Yeah, it does. As much as I'll defend Clinton these days, I'll admit it still stings. But you know what?

      If you want to see what happens to a party without superdelegates, look at the GOP nominee right now. Had the Democrats voted for someone less scrupulous than Bernie without superdelegates, the DNC would be in just as bad a spot if not worse.

      The Democratic party would have been better off with Bernie in many ways, but Bernie wasn't perfect. His debate performances were lackluster at best, and I was really waiting for the red meat of in depth plans and policies every time he got up on stage, and it never showed.

      When it became clear that Trump was going to be the GOP nominee, I was actually somewhat relieved he was going up against Hillary. She knows what it's like to deal with idiots having put up with the Republicans during their long slow slide into insanity, and knows exactly how to play them and give them all the rope they need to hang themselves. And honestly, I think Bernie would have been too good for that. I think he'd have been too nice to Trump, and not given Trump the reason to prove what his natural temperament was.

      I don't think Bernie wanted to win. I think he wanted leverage to shape the future of the party, and I believe he got that 100%.

  6. Re: Wikileaks is a toxic organisation. by Rei · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Um, have you seen their Twitter feed lately? It's a nonstop feed of anti-Clinton propaganda, half of it retweets, a lot of the claims so bad that even Wikileaks supporters on the Wikileaks Reddit sub have been calling them out on it. It's morphed into Breitbart.

    They're even repeating Trump's "rigged election" lines:

    There is no US election. There is power consolidation. Rigged primary, rigged media and rigged 'pied piper' candidate drive consolidation.

    --
    "99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
  7. Collateral murder by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's take a trip down memory lane.

    Wikileaks published the diplomatic leaks in three large chunks, which included the "collateral murder" video.

    At the time, Julian was surprised at how little impact the releases caused. He thought at the time that a huge drop would cause a huge response, but that turned out not to be the case(*). The news cycle quickly moved on to other issues.

    He realized then that to get maximum effect you have to play the media a little.

    So now he announces ahead of time that he has the data, then releases the data. He releases the data in smaller chunks, to spread the effect out, to keep the news cycle interested..

    People see the "I have an interesting drop coming up" announcements as feeding his ego, but what he's *really* doing is getting everyone's attention.

    And of course, a single monolithic drop is easy to counter with a juicy counter article. We saw that with the Trump "locker room" clip, which completely eclipsed the first of the recent Podesta E-mail drops. If Julian had released the entire tranch at that time, it would have been lost in the noise.

    If Wikileaks had simply released everything at once after getting it, and not let Assange make his statements obviously made to be clear attacks on Clinton's campaign, you might have a point. But they didn't.

    You're completely wrong on this point. Portioning out the drops gives the data maximum exposure, and helps to ensure that people notice and comment.

    Julian is doing a good job, let's not lose sight of the sheer volume of corruption he's brought to light.

    (*) From my memory of an interview he gave.

  8. Re: Wikileaks is a toxic organisation. by Shane_Optima · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pardon him for what? He's a non-citizen of the USA who never signed any non-disclosure agreement with the NSA, who reported information given to him by a source. (He didn't do it in an objective way, but throughout history most newspapers have never claimed to be entirely objective.) The fact that you can casually admit that we're after the man in clear disregard for our first amendment (but we're not after any of the perjurers he exposed) and then say that somehow means he's "lost every shred of credibility" is staggering.

    Credibility for what, pray tell? I don't give a shit about the man's opinions, that's not even relevant, so are you actually asserting he's putting out false information now?

    I don't care if the information about Hillary's lies are part of some Russian plot or not. If the truth is "destabilizing" well then fuck stability. Hillary admitting to having "public" and "private" positions is a piece of information that I, as a citizen, want to have. I especially want that information to be out there if she wins, as seems likely enough. And if you think we shouldn't have that information, just because Wikileaks didn't tit for tat release something on Trump as well... well, to hell with you.

    Anyone who thinks shooting the messenger is more important than examining the message is highly suspect in my book.

  9. Re:Smokescreen by Xenographic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe someone got upset over this? - https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiL...

    Whoever did it, it's a really bad way to make a point.

  10. Re:Competing theories by Rei · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's some past examples of True Pundit "journalism" for you.

      * Clinton secretly wearing mini stealth earbud to receive answers from her team during the debate

      * Clinton was using secret hand signals to tell Lester Holt what to say

      * Claims Clinton had a medical issue during the debate and Trump mouthed the word "Seizure"

      * Offers a $1m reward (as if a website like True Pundit has $1m) for Clinton's medical records, suggesting that she has "dementia, post-concussion syndrome, Parkinson’s disease, brain tumor, brain injury, complex partial seizures, and/or many more alleged ailments" and is followed by a doctor disguised as a Secret Service agent carrying an autoinjector of diazepam.

    --
    "99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
  11. Re: Wikileaks is a toxic organisation. by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The propaganda runs thick in this thread. Wikileaks is a website for publishing secrets that should not have been kept, nothing more and nothing less. People either choose to send it information or not and obviously the corrupt hate it. This mind bogglingly dumb attack is pointless, Wikileaks can be replaced again and again and well, realistically tens of thousands of times over. Wake up to your bullshit, they can be a publishing branch of the entire worlds intelligence services or as in reality the publishing branch of government agents from all over the world pissed off with their own governments.

    Seriously this shit is so stupid, governments are clearly far more upset that foreign intelligence services are publicly releasing this information rather that in a collusive manner keeping it secret. It seems that corrupt politicians are quite amenable to blackmail for services, as long as a suitably large deposit in a tax haven occurs, for them just business as normal (the business as normal part is when corporate executives paying enormous multi-million dollar bribes throw sex and drug fuelled parties which corrupt politicians are required to attend to demonstrate their active corruption and evidence is retained to ensure compliance, they accept it).

    That what all this Democratic party propaganda is about, it is not that the Russian Intelligence Services have this information, it's that they are releasing proof of government corruption to the US public. They do not give one crap, that Russia has this information, they are pissed off the same old, same old does not occur ie we have this evidence of corruption and we will publish it unless you do us some favours in return, the corrupt politicians reply, not a problem but you will have to pay me as well, I will not do it for free, so you can either lose me as an agent of your government or make pay me millions of dollars.

    In the most disgusting fashion imaginable, this is exactly what the entirety of US main stream media is cheering on and what the majority of the unrepresentative US government is cheering on and what US Investigatory agencies are really, really pissed off about.

    As far as I am concerned keep it coming the more the merrier and for those scum policing agencies who are not using this information to pursue and prosecute the corruption exposed, you soil yourselves and dishonour your service, you become less than nothing. In the most pathetic fashion imaginable you support the corruption of others earning millions upon millions whilst you collect peanuts in return to appear incompetent (you are not even being paid for your corruption, just your regular wage, even when as part of conspiracy that you can bring down, you in the typical corrupt fashion are entitled to a equal share of those millions, so pathetically lame).

    Wikileaks should of course not issue instruction to anyone, that is a technical faux pas. The only thing allowed is an editorial with regard to how those working at Wikileaks feel about the digital conflagration. The only public response should be to send more secrets to Wikileaks to be exposed to the public, so the public can start acting upon them and investigate and prosecute the corrupt or at the very least embarrass the crap out of investigatory agencies failing to do their job, failing their oaths and failing their countries, shame, shame, shame.

    In that light Wikileaks should send a copy of the information to the applicable agencies and record and display their response, each and every time, information is sent to them regarding corruption, so the public can watch as those agencies corruptly fail to act upon the evidence of corruption provided.

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  12. Re: Wikileaks is a toxic organisation. by nanoflower · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As far as I know they've had no such releases on Trump. Then you add in the staggered release at the end of the campaign when it seems like they had this data months ago so it definitely looks to me like they are trying to hurt Clinton's campaign at the end of the race when the release can do the most damage. If they were just interested in exposing the information why not release it months ago when they got the data?

  13. Re: Wikileaks is a toxic organisation. by TellarHK · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's been absolutely nothing in the actual stolen data that's been released, which has shown any evidence of actually rising to corruption or anything criminal or destabilizing. What's destabilizing is the manner in which Wikileaks has been promoting and releasing the information, calculated to cause maximum disruption in the American press in the leadup to the election. If Wikileaks were operating simply as a neutral information broker, they'd have dumped it all at once.

    A fundamental problem here is that these hacks actually fail the basic qualification for Wikileaks, that's right in the name of the organization. "leaks".

    These aren't leaks, these are hacks. A leak is when someone on the inside of something puts information out there for public consumption, which actually has a completely different set of possible motivations. Hacks on the other hand, are frequently committed by people who have a real stake in hurting the target of the hacking, and the motivations involved mean that any reasonable person needs to be more careful about giving the results any actual weight because of the likelihood of modification.

  14. Re: Wikileaks is a toxic organisation. by cfalcon · · Score: 5, Informative

    > It's morphed into Breitbart.

    It's morphed into Jill Stein, not breitbart. Republicans don't like their nominee being called a "pied piper candidate", for instance, which Wikileaks absolutely called him (the quote is from a Democrat email, of course). The Green party is absolutely calling out the Democratic party too, remember.

    Also note that Assange spoke at Jill Stein's nomination. He didn't endorse anyone (neither did Wikileaks), but when asked whether he prefers Clinton or Trump his quote was "you are asking if I prefer cholera or gonorrhea".

  15. Re: Wikileaks is a toxic organisation. by cfalcon · · Score: 3, Informative

    Politifact is run by the Tampa Bay Times, which has endorsed Hillary Clinton. Right wing sites throw around its somewhat loose ties to Clinton Foundation donors, which you may or may not find compelling (I don't). There's also a whole (right wing) site devoted to calling out stuff politifact does, http://www.politifactbias.com/ . Those claims at least can be accepted or rejected on a case-by-case basis.

    When a site claims to be neutral or know facts, even if it is launched and initially operated with the BEST of intentions, there's a big chance it will become biased via some method or other, soon enough.

  16. Re:Wikileaks is a toxic organisation. by TellarHK · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There are a lot of evil things about Trump, but most of them don't need to be leaked because they're already public knowledge. He just lies about them with absolute conviction and for some reason, people believe him.

    Hillary keeps being accused of corruption, but even in the wildest fantasies of the Republican opposition, they've never had a damn thing that she could actually be *charged* with, because she's just doing the same things politicians have done since the dawn of time. They're just mad because she does them far, far better than they do. Is she a manipulative person with her own agenda that will steamroll her opposition? Absolutely. But to many of us, she's *our* kind of steamroller. I don't know what your media is telling you about Hillary, or what sites on the internet you're reading, but many of us don't believe she's going to be a blank check for the financial industry by any means. Is she "cozy" with them? Maybe, but at least she knows what she's dealing with, and is in a position to challenge them from a position of authority and begrudging respect from most of them.

    It's a terrible thing that your country has to deal with such problems due to sanctions, but unfortunately for you, Russia has really put themselves in a position to earn them. Seizing the Crimea through the "invasion of green men" as it's been called is a blatant assault on Ukraine, and they should absolutely be shunned for it.

    Regarding the media in your country and how they report on Trump... well, that's pretty much what our media is saying, too. But at every turn, Trump has chances to say things to disprove those accusations and completely fails to even get close to it. He will quite literally say things like "I respect women, I respect women more than any other man alive." and then follow that up the next day by saying that a woman wasn't pretty enough to sexually harass or assault. He's a cartoon come to life, a terrible, terrible cartoon.

  17. Re: Wikileaks is a toxic organisation. by TellarHK · · Score: 4, Informative

    Pretty much every media outlet that doesn't have implicit bias in its very DNA has endorsed Hillary, including ones that haven't endorsed a Democrat at all in over 100 years, ones that have only endorsed candidates two or three times in a century, and as of October 6th the number of endorsements for Donald Trump among major American newspapers sat at a big fat zero.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/don...

    The only "conspiracy" that would be on par than that, if it were actually indicative of one, would be climate science. However, you can usually find maybe 2-3 people in every group of 100 climate scientists that will disagree.

  18. Re: Wikileaks is a toxic organisation. by c · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... as of October 6th the number of endorsements for Donald Trump among major American newspapers sat at a big fat zero.

    That's a bit of a no-brainer, really.

    One thing Trump has said (and stuck with) is that he wants to open up libel laws. No news organization anywhere on the political spectrum wants their job to get harder or more expensive.

    --
    Log in or piss off.