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I'm surprised Julian Assange doesn’t have a kill switch in place, where sensitive info which has been held up to this point will be released upon his death or c

I'm surprised Julian Assange doesn’t have a kill switch in place, where sensitive info which has been held up to this point will be released upon his death or conviction. At least none that we know of.

grenoire 7y ago
A kill switch is different than a dead man's switch; the former is a switch to stop the entirety of a process, and the latter is one that is activated when the human operator is incapacitated.
vntok 7y ago
What makes you believe he has that kind of interesting sensitive information in the first place?
- threeseed 7y ago
  Because reports have him receiving information either directly or indirectly from the Russian government. And they have access to all sorts of sensitive information. John Podesta and Hillary Clinton's emails allegedly found its way to Wikileaks through this path.
  - sixQuarks 7y ago
    From what I've researched, the Hillary emails were most likely from an internal source.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - droithomme 7y ago
      Correct. Former Ambassador Craig Murray has stated that a disgruntled DNC employee, unhappy with the treatment of Sanders, personally gave him the emails in Washington and he couriered the emails to his friend Assange who then published them. And as has been pointed out the Podesta emails were taken through a phishing email which was sent to thousands of people (so it wasn't spear phishing) and which he foolishly fell for.
      - threeseed 7y ago
        Craig Murray's statements are highly disputed and some of them are just plain ridiculous e.g. you can't transfer data to Russian servers at > 6MB/s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Murray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Murray
        mycall 7y ago
        There are many VPNs in Russia that support 1000mbps
        LyndsySimon 7y ago
        If this were true, my World of Tanks client would take much longer to update.
        droithomme 7y ago
        Murray was citing the findings of a forensics team comprised of veteran members of the intelligence community. There's two aspects to the time stamps. One is that based on the time stamps, the emails were all copied on Nov 7 2016 at rates of up to 49.1 megabytes per second.* This is fairly high for internet transfers. The other aspect is that the last modified timestamps of all emails and attachments were quantized to a 2 second granularity. This means this was not a hacked internet server to server transfer but was a copy to an intermediary drive that was formatted with the old FAT format. The forensics show it wasn't a hack. No one competent in security or forensics would honestly come to that conclusion based on what is known. When coupled with Murray's testimony that he personally couriered the emails from a park near American University in DC back to Assange himself, it's curious Murray has not been subpoenaed to name the leaker, also it's curious the FBI had no interest in inspecting the DNC servers or drives. * The wikipedia article deceptively misrepresents this as 49.1 megabits per second. Both its own sources explicitly say megabytes, and this is confirmable by examining the original data, which anyone competent can easily do themselves if they have doubts.
        droithomme 7y ago
        I retract several of my above claims. The version of the files I analyzed was a much later copy with new time stamps. The veteran members of the intelligence community, including NSA whistleblower William Binney, analyzed a set of DNC emails released by Guccifer 2.0 which consisted of 1,976 megabytes of data that were downloaded or copied over a period of 87 seconds on July 5 2016. https://www.salon.com/2017/08/15/what-if-the-dnc-russian-hack-was-really-a-leak-after-all-a-new-report-raises-questions-media-and-democrats-would-rather-ignore/ https://www.salon.com/2017/08/15/what-if-the-dnc-russian-hac... I don't have that original leak and therefore can not verify their claims.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    Podesta emails were phished. This doesn't require APT of any sort.
chmod775 7y ago
I'll read that as "[I'd be] surprised if Julian Assange doesn't have a [dead man's switch] in place". And indeed he does. Some time ago Wikileaks/Assange distributed an encrypted insurance file. The torrent is about 90GB: https://file.wikileaks.org/torrent/2016-06-03_insurance.aes256.torrent https://file.wikileaks.org/torrent/2016-06-03_insurance.aes2... There was actually multiple versions fo this file, each larger than the previous one. This is the most recent version afaik. It's likely this particular dead man's switch is actually trusted people though.
- jacobush 7y ago
  I wonder if this could backfire. With the "normal" or old guard politicians, this could have been a credible threat. Nobody wanted a scandal. With the new breed, scandals are just life.
  - m-p-3 7y ago
    Even worse, they thrive on scandals.
    - sixQuarks 7y ago
      ugh, I think you're right. It's kind of become like "no publicity is bad publicity"
    - jp555 7y ago
      Chaos is a ladder, unless you're a theorist. To theorists chaos is destruction (of their precious models). To practitioners chaos is a ladder. Those with real Skin In the Game. Economist vs. Trader.
      - jacobush 7y ago
        Precious models like “standards” and “semblance of moral code”. :-:
- rapsey 7y ago
  Yeah but that could also just as well be random data.
willvarfar 7y ago
He has claimed he does. Fairly recent article with background https://heavy.com/news/2019/04/julian-assange-dead-mans-switch-wikileaks-insurance-files/ https://heavy.com/news/2019/04/julian-assange-dead-mans-swit...
exikyut 7y ago
The problem is, the chaos and shockwave caused by such an event would a) only induce further chaos as a response, and b) likely be interpreted as an attack. Considering the fairness and justice of current proceedings, the response would not only likely be ugly, it would set a precedent difficult to answer. Many possibilities there. While I don't know, I would be very surprised if Wikileaks itself wasn't sitting on more than enough information to create such a dent. It seems things are effectively at a cross between stalemate and a Mexican standoff. Poor health is better than death, I guess? It's very sad. If I was told all the details about the sequence of events, but not told which countries were behind the subsequent response, treatment and current conditions, I would not correctly guess on the first try, and probably not the second, or the third...
- exikyut 7y ago
  Ooh. This is at -4 at the moment. Very fascinating.

grenoire 7y ago

A kill switch is different than a dead man's switch; the former is a switch to stop the entirety of a process, and the latter is one that is activated when the human operator is incapacitated.

vntok 7y ago

What makes you believe he has that kind of interesting sensitive information in the first place?

threeseed 7y ago
Because reports have him receiving information either directly or indirectly from the Russian government. And they have access to all sorts of sensitive information. John Podesta and Hillary Clinton's emails allegedly found its way to Wikileaks through this path.
- sixQuarks 7y ago
  From what I've researched, the Hillary emails were most likely from an internal source.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - droithomme 7y ago
    Correct. Former Ambassador Craig Murray has stated that a disgruntled DNC employee, unhappy with the treatment of Sanders, personally gave him the emails in Washington and he couriered the emails to his friend Assange who then published them. And as has been pointed out the Podesta emails were taken through a phishing email which was sent to thousands of people (so it wasn't spear phishing) and which he foolishly fell for.
    - threeseed 7y ago
      Craig Murray's statements are highly disputed and some of them are just plain ridiculous e.g. you can't transfer data to Russian servers at > 6MB/s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Murray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Murray
      - mycall 7y ago
        There are many VPNs in Russia that support 1000mbps
      - LyndsySimon 7y ago
        If this were true, my World of Tanks client would take much longer to update.
      - droithomme 7y ago
        Murray was citing the findings of a forensics team comprised of veteran members of the intelligence community. There's two aspects to the time stamps. One is that based on the time stamps, the emails were all copied on Nov 7 2016 at rates of up to 49.1 megabytes per second.* This is fairly high for internet transfers. The other aspect is that the last modified timestamps of all emails and attachments were quantized to a 2 second granularity. This means this was not a hacked internet server to server transfer but was a copy to an intermediary drive that was formatted with the old FAT format. The forensics show it wasn't a hack. No one competent in security or forensics would honestly come to that conclusion based on what is known. When coupled with Murray's testimony that he personally couriered the emails from a park near American University in DC back to Assange himself, it's curious Murray has not been subpoenaed to name the leaker, also it's curious the FBI had no interest in inspecting the DNC servers or drives. * The wikipedia article deceptively misrepresents this as 49.1 megabits per second. Both its own sources explicitly say megabytes, and this is confirmable by examining the original data, which anyone competent can easily do themselves if they have doubts.
        droithomme 7y ago
        I retract several of my above claims. The version of the files I analyzed was a much later copy with new time stamps. The veteran members of the intelligence community, including NSA whistleblower William Binney, analyzed a set of DNC emails released by Guccifer 2.0 which consisted of 1,976 megabytes of data that were downloaded or copied over a period of 87 seconds on July 5 2016. https://www.salon.com/2017/08/15/what-if-the-dnc-russian-hack-was-really-a-leak-after-all-a-new-report-raises-questions-media-and-democrats-would-rather-ignore/ https://www.salon.com/2017/08/15/what-if-the-dnc-russian-hac... I don't have that original leak and therefore can not verify their claims.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Podesta emails were phished. This doesn't require APT of any sort.

chmod775 7y ago

I'll read that as "[I'd be] surprised if Julian Assange doesn't have a [dead man's switch] in place". And indeed he does. Some time ago Wikileaks/Assange distributed an encrypted insurance file. The torrent is about 90GB: https://file.wikileaks.org/torrent/2016-06-03_insurance.aes256.torrent https://file.wikileaks.org/torrent/2016-06-03_insurance.aes2... There was actually multiple versions fo this file, each larger than the previous one. This is the most recent version afaik. It's likely this particular dead man's switch is actually trusted people though.

jacobush 7y ago
I wonder if this could backfire. With the "normal" or old guard politicians, this could have been a credible threat. Nobody wanted a scandal. With the new breed, scandals are just life.
- m-p-3 7y ago
  Even worse, they thrive on scandals.
  - sixQuarks 7y ago
    ugh, I think you're right. It's kind of become like "no publicity is bad publicity"
  - jp555 7y ago
    Chaos is a ladder, unless you're a theorist. To theorists chaos is destruction (of their precious models). To practitioners chaos is a ladder. Those with real Skin In the Game. Economist vs. Trader.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      Precious models like “standards” and “semblance of moral code”. :-:
rapsey 7y ago
Yeah but that could also just as well be random data.

willvarfar 7y ago

He has claimed he does. Fairly recent article with background https://heavy.com/news/2019/04/julian-assange-dead-mans-switch-wikileaks-insurance-files/ https://heavy.com/news/2019/04/julian-assange-dead-mans-swit...

exikyut 7y ago

The problem is, the chaos and shockwave caused by such an event would a) only induce further chaos as a response, and b) likely be interpreted as an attack. Considering the fairness and justice of current proceedings, the response would not only likely be ugly, it would set a precedent difficult to answer. Many possibilities there. While I don't know, I would be very surprised if Wikileaks itself wasn't sitting on more than enough information to create such a dent. It seems things are effectively at a cross between stalemate and a Mexican standoff. Poor health is better than death, I guess? It's very sad. If I was told all the details about the sequence of events, but not told which countries were behind the subsequent response, treatment and current conditions, I would not correctly guess on the first try, and probably not the second, or the third...

exikyut 7y ago
Ooh. This is at -4 at the moment. Very fascinating.