6 ms·

Well, now that they've ORDERED them...

• ars 16y ago
  It does sound funny, but I wouldn't underestimate them. Depending on how mad they get they have a lot of tools at their disposal to make sure these don't get released. If I were them I would start by DOSing all wikileaks servers. Next I would trace where the servers were and pressure local governments into seizing them. (It wouldn't take much pressure, other governments can't be happy about wikileaks either.) Next I would stage local burglaries and just "happen" to steal the wikileaks servers. Wikileaks does have some options if this happens, most notably peer-to-peer releasing. Because of that the DOD may decide it's not worth starting up with them.
  • jrockway 16y ago
    This exact technique solved the piracy problem perfectly! But remember, the documents are supposedly already redistributed except without the decryption key. When the time comes and the decryption key leaks, there will be so many copies of the data around that the government won't be able to do anything about it. Information wants to be free.
  • mixmax 16y ago
    I wouldn't underestimate Julian Assange either. He made the first free portscanner (precursor to Nmap), co-invented Rubberhose deniable encryption and wrote the Usenet caching software NNTPCache. He knows what he's doing.
    • rbanffy 16y ago
      These guys are known for using bullets... I wouldn't be overconfident.
      • jrockway 16y ago
        You're thinking of North Korea. In the US, we have actual laws that the government has to follow. Specifically, we are not entitled to perform summary executions, even if someone is redistributing copies of stolen documents (outside of our jurisdiction). Honestly, the whole thing is hot air right now. The government can't do anything about this incident. They can ensure that they don't let it happen again.
        • steveklabnik 16y ago
          > In the US, we have actual laws that the government has to follow. Not that this is really appropriate here, but the government is increasingly either not following laws, or not following the spirit of laws. For instance, Bradley Manning is being held outside of the country and isn't allowed to talk to a lawyer, or Gitmo, or this whole "videotaping cops" thing, or the storing of airport scanner photos... the list goes on and on. I don't think they'll outright kill Julian, but don't think the government is actually bound by the law. (EDIT: tptacek has corrected my statement about Manning, but my overall point still stands.)
          • tptacek 16y ago
            Bradley Manning is not being held outside the country, and if you don't have that fact right, I'm guessing you don't have the facts on his legal representation either.
            • steveklabnik 16y ago
              Check out my reply to your sibling, I read it in Harper's this morning.
              • tptacek 16y ago
                Harpers is also wrong. Not shocking. Harpers: often great writing, rarely great reporting. Manning has been at Quantico for (at least) almost a week now.
    • tptacek 16y ago
      He didn't write the first free portscanner (all portscanners were free in the '90s, and most still are). He wrote the first fast one.
      • mixmax 16y ago
        This is what wikipedia says: "In 1995, Assange wrote Strobe, the first free and open source port scanner. Strobe inspired Fyodor to develop the Nmap port scanner." Is that incorrect, or weren't the other ones open source? I'll trust you over wikipedia :-)
        • tptacek 16y ago
          There were definitely port scanners before Strobe, but Strobe was the fastest port scanner. The notion that there would have been a commercial port scanner in 1995 strikes me as funny. If you just need me to "win the bet" here I'll point out that even SATAN scanned ports, and the netcat man page (also '95) shows how to use it as a port scanner. Hobbit "invented" UDP port scanner (which Strobe didn't do) in '94. If you were thinking that maybe portscanning was an original idea, I'll recommend that you research NUAA (a "port scanner" for X.25 networks) and Tone-Loc (a "port scanner" for telephones). Remember that 1994 is before the web and before ISDN. The Internet was mostly a means to get on IRC, which was in large part a place to talk about attacks on dial-up systems. This is back in the days where there was a "commercial" UUNet and a "noncommercial-only" NSFNet, and actual splits between the two. To some attackers, a high-quality NUA scanner might have been more valuable than a high-quality TCP scanner. Who scans TCP ports when 1/3 of Unix systems are running rexd and another 1/3 are exporting / to "everybody"? For the record, I 100% believe Strobe inspired Fyodor. I don't want to take anything away from Strobe. It was impressive for its time. (Late edit: I'm reminded by a friend that Pluvius wrote pscan.c before Proff wrote Strobe. So there.) (Later edit: here's probe.c from Phrack in '94: http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=46&id=23 http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=46&id=23 [look for probe_tcp_ports]).
          • mixmax 16y ago
            I stand corrected...
  • rbanffy 16y ago
    The only reason Assange is still free is because everybody knows the documents will leak unfiltered the moment he is arrested.
    • tptacek 16y ago
      The world is actually not a giant spy novel; the reason Assange is free probably has more to do with jurisdiction and the likelihood that he has not actually committed an identifiable crime. Just because some lunatic at AEI (AEI: the morons that got us into this mess in the first place) says the FBI should kidnap Assange from Iceland doesn't mean that it's actually US policy to kidnap people who post embarassing things on the Internet.
      • StavrosK 16y ago
        I'll bet that Assange will be found dead after a "mugging" soon...
        • tptacek 16y ago
          I am trying to think of any cause of death for Julian Assange that would not create a virulent and permanent conspiracy theory. Can't think of one.
          • rbanffy 16y ago
            Before any movement in this direction is made, Assange would have to be neutralized - the documents leaked would be evaluated, procedures changed and steps taken so that said documents become as harmless as conceivably possible. As for pointing fingers, Wikileaks is assumed to have access to documents about private companies. Any minor player could be blamed for any evil that reaches him and his close associates that, by now, must be known by everybody interested. The world is not a spy novel, but Assange is not safe. He is one border away from being locked up forever.
            • tptacek 16y ago
  • thebigshane 16y ago
    I'm sure they have the resources, capabilities, and plans for nearly all of that... but I think they are waiting for either less public targets or a a much higher target (like China) before pulling something so big that would draw so much attention from the tech community.