14 ms·

Password-cracking theory against Assange unravels at extradition trial

201 points by k1m 6y ago

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
Except ... factual impossibility is not a defense to a charge of conspiracy, or indeed most charges of inchoate offenses. If you have a gun, and we agree that I will shoot someone with it, but it turns out (unbeknownst to either of us) that the gun has in fact been permanently deactivated ... that's still conspiracy to commit murder.
- ColanR 6y ago
  That's how the FBI has caught terrorists in the past. Agents work with the terrorist and build a dud bomb, then arrest them when it fails to go off.
  - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
    If you really want to see how crazy this can get, a quick search for 'voodoo doll attempted murder' will be eye-opening.
    - ttul 6y ago
      Canada lost a case against a couple of dimwitted "terrorists" that the mounties engaged in an expensive, drawn out plot to recruit them to build a bomb [1]. In that case, the conduct of police was judged to be entrapment based on a precedent in which it is written, "The state must conduct its law enforcement operations in a manner that is consonant with the community’s underlying sense of fair play and decency. It cannot manipulate suspects’ lives without limit, turning their day-to-day existence into a piece of theatre in which they are unwitting participants." [1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/judge-says-rcmp-entrapped-bc-couple-in-terror-case-overturns-guilty-verdict/article31199892/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/judge-...
      - johnyzee 6y ago
        This has happened again and again, the world over, with the purpose of playing up the perceived threat of terrorism. For example, Richard Reid, the 'shoe bomber', was mentally retarded, and caught trying to ignite the C4 he had somehow acquired, using matches.
  - gonzo41 6y ago
    That seems like it sails very closely to entrapment.
    - DiabloD3 6y ago
      By any reasonable interpretation, it is entrapment, and a fair number of lawyers out there were pretty unhappy, some vocally so, with the outcome of that whole shitshow.
      - nobody9999 6y ago
        Please compare and contrast "reasonable" and "legal" interpretations. While such a comparison might rub you (and me, for that matter) the wrong way, it's the "legal" interpretation that holds in a US Article III court[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tribunals_in_the_United_States#Article_III_courts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tribunals_in_the_Unite...
        DiabloD3 6y ago
        My point was, it rubbed lawyers the wrong way. I'm going to listen to a lawyer when they speak of their own craft.
    - maxlybbert 6y ago
      It does. My understanding is that as long as the police don’t make the suggestion, then it’s not entrapment. If the officer asks, “hey, do you wanna bomb that building?” it’s entrapment. If you ask “would you help me bomb that building?” and the officer sells you what you think is a bomb, it’s not. Of course, the officer isn’t necessarily wearing a wire or anything, and it’s possible to phrase things carefully to suggest something without literally making the suggestion, so it comes down to the officer’s testimony (“I never suggested that he commit a crime” and maybe “I did suggest that somebody ought to pay for that behavior”) versus the accused’s.
      - ALittleLight 6y ago
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    They show FBI radicalizes people and creates "terrorists", not catches terrorists. They act like criminals and intimidate people into compliance and then arrest them. But for some reason if you tried pretending to be a terrorist, you'd still be a criminal
    - Fnoord 6y ago
      > They show FBI radicalizes people and creates "terrorists", not catches terrorists. They act like criminals and intimidate people into compliance and then arrest them. > But for some reason if you tried pretending to be a terrorist, you'd still be a criminal That depends. The informant/infiltrator needs to "play along" till some extend. However, they should also not stimulate other people to commit crimes. It is a careful balance. So for example, if Alice asks Bob to make a bomb, and Bob complies (with a fake bomb), then how exactly did Bob (who works for the FBI) create a terrorist? They didn't. They caught one by pretending being one. Apart from the ability to safely catch Alice red-handed, Bob can also testify the intend of Alice. 2 in 1. Would you rather see it was Charlie who made the bomb, but then a real one? Of course not. Sometimes, this infiltration method is one of the few or the only viable way to catch a terrorist or criminal. It is not without risk though; it is high risk, high reward. Not the first option to be chosen; you want low risk, high reward options first. EDIT: in hindsight it would've been better to use different names, ie. Mallory. I leave the above as-is.
- jpcosta 6y ago
  You still have to prove who had the gun in the first place
  - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
    No, actually. Let's say that you've been given a key for a locker at Grand Central Station and told there's a gun inside. We agree that I'll use the gun to shoot someone. You give me the key and I go to collect the gun. In fact, the locker is empty. The gun doesn't even exist and yet there's still a conspiracy to commit murder.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      No, actually, you need additional steps to achieve conspiracy to commit murder in that hypothetical.
      - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
        What's the legal basis for that? The "overt steps" are you giving me the key, and me going to the locker.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        Does the overt act not have to further the conspiracy?
        NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
        Yes: but don't you think that going to collect the weapon furthers the conspiracy to commit murder? There'd inevitably be argument over whether it met the required standard, which differs by jurisdiction. e.g. did it advance the conspiracy substantially? did it take the conspiracy past the point of no return?
- kbenson 6y ago
  It makes sense, for charges about an attempt. Presumably if you attempt to kill someone in a way that doesn't work, you may try again in a way that does later. Also, a case can probably be made that while attempted murder may not be harmful to the intended victim (in some cases), it's still harmful to society.
- DoctorOetker 6y ago
  it's not illegal to crack your own password hash, according to this US Gov expert witness, it's never communicated or proven what this is the hash of.
  - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
    That is the whole point. If Manning and Assange think that a recipe for fruit salad is a hash of a root password for some U.S. Government computer and then attempt to identify a collision for it, with the goal of allowing Manning unauthorized access: that's still conspiracy.
    - DoctorOetker 6y ago
      you missed the point: what if Manning remembered his old box his own password of which he forgot, then asking this "Nathaniel Frank" does not automatically involve "Nathaniel Frank" into a conspiracy, as it is plausible Manning is asking help for non-nefarious personal reasons. It's up to the prosecution to prove that J.A. == "Nathaniel Frank" (and yes, whistleblowers have a long history of leaking to multiple players in case one or more of them are in bed with the oppressor). It's up to the prosecution to prove that "Nathanial Frank" couldn't have believed he was simply helping Manning regain access to whatever non-governmental stuff Manning has legitimate access to, and hence Manning has the right to grant others permission to crack his own hash...
      - anoncareer0212 6y ago
        *her
      - tedunangst 6y ago
        The obvious defense then would be to provide the chat log where manning says hey, I forgot the password to my laptop and really want to play some counter strike, can you help me out?
        gamblor956 6y ago
- emilfihlman 6y ago
  By that logic also: "If I'm God, and we agree that I will kill everyone with my God powers, but it turns out (unbeknownst to either of us) that I'm not God, that's still conspiracy to commit murder." Promising impossibility is not a conspiracy. https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladviceofftopic/comments/6le3hy/magic_intent_and_murder/ https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladviceofftopic/comments/6le3hy...
  - ColanR 6y ago
    Given that someone has actually been convicted of attempted murder by voodoo doll (ridiculous as that is), that reddit discussion sounds a bit like wishful thinking. https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2004/dec/09/attempted-voodoo-first-degree/ https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2004/dec/09/attempted-vo...
    - emilfihlman 6y ago
      A) that sounds like a legend and b) low level judges are not the measure of law.
  - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
    I believe that what you've linked to is legally incorrect. Refer to, e.g. United States vs. Thomas: https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-united-states-v-thomas https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-u... ... which is an actual appeal court decision. The defendants were at a bar. A drunken woman collapsed. The defendants put her in their car, took her home, and had sex with her while they believed she was unconscious. In fact, the woman had died at the bar, and they had been having sex with a corpse. They could not be convicted of rape, but they could be convicted of attempted rape because they believed the woman was alive at the time. Being factually mistaken about the possibility of a crime is not a defense to a charge of attempt, conspiracy etc.
    - jacobush 6y ago
      That’s slightly charitable. They believed they raped a woman, but they actually desecrated a corpse.
- monoclechris 6y ago
  I'm a fairly serious Assange supporter, but there are clearly lots of children here who don't understand how much intent matters.
- quelsolaar 6y ago
  The problem with the analogy is that committing a murder is a crime for everyone everywhere. For a US citizen who has been given classified information it may be illegal and treasonous to leak classified US information to some one who doesn't have the clearance to get access to it. But a journalist, should have the right to ask people to come forward if they have information with a public interest, even if it is classified. If someone comes forward, they may break the law, but not the journalist. Further more, Assange is not a US citizen, and is there for under no obligation to be loyal to or protect US interests or secrets. He cant by definition be treasonous again any country besides his own. If he on the other hand, provides material support to someone committing a crime, (like helping to crack a password), then he can be tried as an accomplice. This evidence seems to imply he did not.
  - doonesbury 6y ago
    Agree. Nonetheless feds are making him pay through the legal expense and stress of deflecting these charges. What I wonder more about is our own guys: how does manning and Snowden walk out the door with this info anyway? Our search procedures apparently suck. For the record my assessment of our involvement in Iraq is not kind: we should have escalated to armed intrusion to vet wmds base by base instead of invading wholesale on the reason Iraqi's were evasive. Second torture is unamerican, not reliable, and wholly wrong. Not proud at all of what we did here. Our response before after 9/11 was incompetent.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    If his defense against treason is that he's a foreign agent attacking the US, then he'll rightly end up in a POW prison. So he needs a better defense than that
    - simonh 6y ago
      It seems like he didn’t actively attack the US, he simply passed on information freely given to him by US citizens. It’s hard to see how him doing that, not being a US citizen and not being in the US, is any worse than anything hundreds of journalists do all over the world every day.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >If you have a gun, and we agree that I will shoot someone with it, but it turns out (unbeknownst to either of us) that the gun has in fact been permanently deactivated ... that's still conspiracy to commit murder. IIUC, at least in the US, a charge of conspiracy requires an overt act by at least one of the conspirators[0]: "If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. If, however, the offense, the commission of which is the object of the conspiracy, is a misdemeanor only, the punishment for such conspiracy shall not exceed the maximum punishment provided for such misdemeanor." As such, in the scenario you present, unless those who discuss murder actually do something in furtherance of that discussed goal, it's not conspiracy. [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371 N.B.: IANAL
  - simonh 6y ago
    Well in the example they are procuring and preparing to use a gun. That’s doing an act. Incompetently perhaps because unbeknownst to the its not a functioning firearm, but they’re still acting on their intentions.
    - nobody9999 6y ago
      >Well in the example they are procuring and preparing to use a gun. The example mentions a gun, but does not mention that it was procured for the purpose of committing murder. At least in the US, having a gun (there are more guns than people here) by itself isn't very remarkable. If, however, the gun was procured specifically for that purpose, it could be construed as an overt act. Alternatively, if someone retrieved the gun from a storage facility (as was suggested by another commenter) for the purposes of committing murder, that would still be an overt act. ISTR a case where a woman contracted with someone (who turned out to be police acting on a tip from the owner of a website that claimed to put folks in touch with hit men) to kill her husband[0]. Just asking someone to do so wasn't enough. The police had to get the woman to commit an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy (in that case, paying the undercover cop). [0] https://www.wxyz.com/news/monroe-county-woman-arrested-for-trying-to-hire-hitman-to-kill-her-ex-husband https://www.wxyz.com/news/monroe-county-woman-arrested-for-t...
- cmiles74 6y ago
  This gun and murder analogy strikes me as being in bad taste, in this instance. Julian Assange is not being accused of murder by the US government, the particular charges in this case revolves around a hash of a password and alleged attempts to compare that hash to a table of similar hashes and, possibly, finding the matching clear text password for that specific hash value. This is a far cry from conspiracy to commit murder, with our without a functional gun.
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    Actually, that particular issue (the alleged attempt to crack a password hash) isn't covered under the Espionage Act[0]. Rather, it's a separate charge under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act[1]. And that matters because the penalties are enormously more severe for the the former than the latter. >This is a far cry from conspiracy to commit murder, with our without a functional gun. Conspiracy is defined[2] as: "If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. If, however, the offense, the commission of which is the object of the conspiracy, is a misdemeanor only, the punishment for such conspiracy shall not exceed the maximum punishment provided for such misdemeanor." As such, the example was just that, an example. Would you be less butthurt if the example was conspiracy to steal office supplies from a US Post Office, and the overt act was to bring a hand-cart to the post office in order to cart away said office supplies? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371 Edit: Fixed grammatical error
ColanR 6y ago
Summary quote: > Manning never provided the two files necessary to “reconstruct the decryption key” for the password hash, Eller testified. “At the time, it would not have been possible to crack an encrypted password hash, such as the one Manning obtained.”
ciarannolan 6y ago
> ASSANGE Agrees to Help Manning Crack a Password [1] Is this what Assange is accused of doing? 1. Receiving a password hash from Manning 2. Telling Manning he'll try to crack it 3. Following up asking for more info about it (related usernames or something) 4. Never actually cracking it and no further action Does anyone have any more specifics on what Assange actually did here to break the law? The indictment is pretty vague on this and it seems to be the central issue. [1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/downl https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/downl... (page 9)
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  Conspiracy is the agreement to commit a crime. Assange and Manning agreed to try to gain unauthorized access to some U.S. government computer system. Unauthorized computer access is a federal crime, see 18 U.S.C. section 1030. The federal conspiracy charged (18 U.S.C section 371 in this case) also requires that one of the conspirators take an 'overt act' to further conspiracy. This is to stop idle talk about crimes being prosecuted as conspiracies. In this case, Manning actually provided Assange with the hashed password. That's the overt act. But, fundamentally, the conspiracy is the agreement to commit a crime.
  - ciarannolan 6y ago
    That makes sense, thanks. What is Assange's alleged overt act? Or is it just required of one of the conspirators?
    - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
      Only one.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
pera 6y ago
I still don't understand how the Eastern District of Virginia can claim that "Nathaniel Frank" was in fact Julian Assange. The reasoning presented in their affidavit looks clearly fallacious to me (starting at p13): https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2019/04/2017-12-21_Virginia_Assange_Affidavit.pdf https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2019/04/2017-12-21_Vir... There are two assumptions they use to infer the identity of NF: 1- The belief of two persons that the person who they were talking with was probably Assange. 2- That only one single person was using that jabber account. The only thing I can personally infer from the information they presented is that NF was (very likely) a member of Wikileaks at that time. What am I missing?
- coldtea 6y ago
  Nothing - those kind of shady "proofs" are used all the time by states. "Take a word for it" has been taken to a whole new level in the 21st century...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gamblor956 6y ago
  Your not missing anything. this isn't a criminal trial it's an extradition hearing. They're not required to prove their case on the merits, just show they have sufficient facts to make a pro forma case at the criminal trial.
- ChrisKnott 6y ago
  The argument is based on NF referring in the first person to doing things that JA did (debate in Iceland, conference in Norway), that other members of Wikileaks didn't do.
  - pera 6y ago
    As far as I can tell they only state that for the conference in Norway: "[...] Assange was identified as a 'lecturer.' A review of the other names on the list revealed no other persons known to be associated with WikiLeaks" To me the fact that they wrote "other persons known" indicates that they are not sure if there were other members present.
jonplackett 6y ago
Some background that helped me understand why any of the is is important - The government want a way to charge assange with something, that they don’t then have to also charge all the national newspapers with who helped him - because that would then be a much more blatant attack on press freedom. They want to charge him as some form of hacker instead of what it’s really about - that they don’t like what he did as a journalist.
- jonplackett 6y ago
  Further releasing about this, posted earlier in the week on HN. https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silent-assange-trial/ https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silen...
  - singron 6y ago
    This reminds me of Particularism[0]. Instead of applying consistent moral principles to this case to determine right or wrong, they have already decided that this particular case is wrong and are figuring out what moral principles they can come up with to make it wrong. 0: https://iep.utm.edu/morlpat/ https://iep.utm.edu/morlpat/
    - MrsPeaches 6y ago
      Which in turn reminds me of the (apocryphal) quote from Óscar Benavides, former president of Peru: "For my friends everything, for my enemies the law" [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_R._Benavides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_R._Benavides
    - jonplackett 6y ago
      They do a similar thing to this with hackers in general. The various computer misuse acts essentially criminalise so many things we all do all the time - like if go to a coffee shop and put in fake info into the wifi sign up form, technically it's illegal but obviously something they'll never bother to enforce - unless they want to for some other reason. As soon as you start applying the law (or not) on a whim, you're in trouble.
yeahrighthagah 6y ago
At this point why does the US IC not just send some spook shoot the poor Assange in court, everybody knows he's a political criminal USSR style. Everybody knows he's being made an example of to scare off freedom Chinese style.
yeahrighthagah 6y ago
At this point why not just send some spook shoot the poor Assange, everybody knows he's a political criminal USSR style, everybody knows he's being made an example of to scare off freedom Chinese style.
- us_failure 6y ago
  They're still at the stage where they want to make it "look legitimate" to people who don't pay any attention to the details. Anyway, the extrajudicial killing will come later, when he's in a US prison awaiting trial. Epstein style.
627467 6y ago
I'm surprised why "lawfare" is not more commonly used to classify what is happening to Assange and others by Western-sphere dissidents. maybe I'm not really surprised.
gamblor956 6y ago
This isn't a trial.. It's an extradition hearing. They don't need to prove their case. They just need to make a showing of sufficient evidence that they could prove their case at trial.
- liability 6y ago
  It's a kangaroo court. America and the UK are both banana republics.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please stop posting flamewar comments to HN, no matter how you strongly feel about the underlying issues. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - nullc 6y ago
      Who will speak up when they come for the HN moderators?
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  Evidence that one of the crimes Assange is charged with never happened makes it difficult to see how they could prove their case at trial.
erwin222 6y ago
yeah, no! I offer you $1000 a liter of mother's mnilk. Contact me erwin.joosten@telenet.be
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
> “At the time, it would not have been possible to crack an encrypted password hash, such as the one Manning obtained.” Wrong. Rainbow tables have always worked, even 20 years ago.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  Twenty years ago Rainbow Tables didn't exist. Philippe Oechslin published his paper explaining them in 2003. Hellman's improved time-space trade-off is older, but the actual Rainbow Table, popularly used to attack Windows hashes, dates only to Oechslin's paper. The claim is that the hash is from an offline SAM. Windows by that era has an encrypted SAM file, so when it isn't running the raw hashes are actually encrypted with RC4. In principle 128-bits of RC4-enciphered data is useless. RC4 is not good encryption by 2020 standards (nor indeed in 2010) but it's enough that if the 128-bits is from an encrypted SAM they're useless. But the trouble is that tools to decrypt the SAM certainly did exist in 2010.
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    > Twenty years ago Rainbow Tables didn't exist. Maybe they weren’t called rainbow tables back then, but lookup tables of pre-computed hashes for password cracking existed. I was there. However, I may be off by a year... I cannot recall the exact date I first became aware of them. I am fairly certain it was in the 90s.
    - tialaramex 6y ago
      Rainbow Tables are not just lookup tables of pre-computed hashes. Pre-computation is obvious. Hellman comes up with chained pre-computation in the 1980s. Rainbow Tables are further improvement on Hellman's idea. Let's use LM hash as the example, the core idea in LM hash is you can turn up to 7 characters of password into a 64-bit value. LM hash does this twice (so up to 14 character passwords) but we can divide it into two 64-bit hashes. In 1975 LM hash hasn't actually been invented, but if you somehow went back and showed people from 1975 how it works they can pre-compute hashes. There are 2^56 possible hashes. So if you've got somewhere to store 2^56 hashes and passwords you can do the work and then reverse any LM hash. Hmm, 2^56 is a lot though. In 1975 nobody can store this data. By 1995 LM hash does exist, and Hellman has proposed his chaining optimisations. So, you do 2^56 calculations still (this is a bunch of work but it's certainly possible) but they form long chains so now you don't need to store 2^56 answers somewhere. Maybe you store 2^40 answers, you need to do 2^16 calculations for every reverse and you need 2^40 storage and sadly your recall is now poor. Maybe it only works 80% of the time. Storing 2^40 answers in 1995 is expensive, you can't afford to do it, but the government or a rich company can. By 2005 there are Rainbow Tables. Phillipe's idea massively improved recall. You can have say 99.9% recall, store 2^40 answers and do 2^16 calculations to reverse a hash. Also in 2005, storing 2^40 answers seems reasonable, you can just walk to a store and buy many gigabytes of storage space no problem.
us_failure 6y ago
The best thing for humanity would be the fall of the USA. Their rotten, corrupt, murderous empire has gone on for long enough.
- whatthesmack 6y ago
  You may have jumped over a few good things about the USA...
tialaramex 6y ago
Almost all of this is about a 2013 trial and not this present proceeding at all. And the claim (from that trial) is that Manning provided Assange with bytes from an encrypted SAM or that it's only part of the password hash. It's actually pretty aggravating reading trial documents when nobody present knows what they're talking about, it might as well be a Star Trek script, this is why it's so nice when the trial judge or at least some of the lawyers know what they're talking about (e.g. the Horizon scandal in the UK) but we can't have nice things most of the time. Here's what the transcript says Manning provided: 80c11049faebf441d524fb3c4cd5351c That's 16 bytes = 128 bits = one Windows password hash. So straight away it's completely reasonable that this is in fact a Windows password hash, and in the absence of evidence of how Manning obtained that value it's only speculation that this is actually encrypted somehow (e.g. because it is from an encrypted offline SAM). And yet Assange's defence apparently has hours of such speculation on tap, for whatever they suppose that's worth. What Assange talks about doing is using Rainbow tables. This would be applicable regardless of which type of Windows hash it is (or Assange thought it was) but crucially if the password is strong then you only get a result if this 128-bit value is an LM Hash. The risible LM Hash turns the first seven characters into one 64-bit value using DES, the next seven into another 64-bit value (DES again). It doesn't work on long passwords, if you have a long password then you can't have an LM hash. This of course is one reason somehow who tried to obtain both hashes would only get one... The NT Hash is MD4(password). If the password is "qwerty" or "manning" that's not difficult to find, and Rainbow Tables that will be fairly reliable for simple passwords with NT Hash are readily available and would have been years ago too. But if the password is sixteen random characters then MD4(password) might as well be Argon2id(password) for all the good that'll do you. It's just too many combinations. So, for all we may ever know that 128-bit value is in fact a legitimate NT Hash of a good password.
baybal2 6y ago
I think the merit of the case is not about what particular thing Assangge did which warrants extradition, but the fact that extraditions are near impossible to thwart in court as such, in many common law countries, because if you are innocent, your only remedy is to go to the country demanding extradition, and trying proving that. This is so broken, and add extraditions to a long list of habeas corpus negating tools governments in the West now amass.
- lexusgx 6y ago
  That's not truly what's broken. If it were a truly fair system, no one would fear showing up to say they were innocent. The problem is that the courts regularly ignore due process because there isn't any incentive for them to uphold the letter of the law. The side with the more expensive team of lawyers regularly wins. If you could bet on court decisions, you would see the odds heavily in favor of the more moneyed party. There should be a monetary incentive that encourages people who can read the law to evaluate past court decisions, and that punishes legal bodies (maybe even in a criminal court) that ignore due process.
  - closeparen 6y ago
    The issue is the long-standing gentleman’s agreement not to enforce the laws regarding classified information against journalists. The computer intrusion charge is prosecutors’ strategy to get him behind bars while preserving that tradition. Give the facts here, he probably would be acquitted. But then the government might decide to use the classified information laws, under which it has a slam-dunk case. Prosecutorial policy convention is not due process. Those charges are what he really has to fear if he’s extradited.
mint2 6y ago
Reading over these comments, I feel there are two common takes on the matter. And it’s shows why discussing certain topics is just painful. one side seems to be just pointing out and clarifying the laws and evidence, the side seems to refuse to accept what seems to be a straightforward explanation. You might disagree with the laws, you might think they are unfair, or think they are applied unequally or selectively, and that is fine. All those things are unarguably true in general. But by the definition of conspiracy, I don’t get why so many commenters are trying to argue that what assange did does not fit that description. If your objections were any of the reasons I mentioned earlier, that would make total sense. But rejecting that what he did technically can be described as conspiracy per the definition under United States law? It just makes you look unreasonable. Is the USA out for assange? Yes, they’ll throw anything they can find at him. And it looks like they found something. Whether that is a good state of affairs is not relevant for the discussion at hand. they’ve got him with this charge. Denying it won’t help him. Denial of a fact helps no one. Realize you lost the battle and move on so you can win the war or whatever analogy along those lines you want to use.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  >But by the definition of conspiracy, I don’t get why so many commenters are trying to argue that what assange did does not fit that description. Classifying this as "conspiracy" violates the first amendment. What he did should be expected behavior of the press, I won't just abandon this encroachment and move on.
- K0balt 6y ago
  There appears to be no proof that it was in fact assange who was communicating with manning. Wiki leaks affiliated? Almost certainly. Assange? No actual evidence. (that I am aware of) IMHO this is the salient weakness in the case for extradition. The fact that the same exact argument could be used against any wiki leaks affiliated individual at that time makes it a witch hunt instead of a legitimate legal proceeding.
- boublepop 6y ago
  A journalist receiving information from a source is not conspiracy, evne if that information is obtained illegally. That’s the core og he case, if you disagree then all the other journalistic entities involver should be on trial before we even start talking about a potential extradition for Assange. This whole endeavor is a clear and blatant attack on freedom of information. It should be clear to everyone across the globe by now. The American government does not care if it commits war crimes, however it will go to extremes to punish any journalists or whistleblowers who expose these war crimes.

201 points by k1m 6y ago

Except ... factual impossibility is not a defense to a charge of conspiracy, or indeed most charges of inchoate offenses. If you have a gun, and we agree that I will shoot someone with it, but it turns out (unbeknownst to either of us) that the gun has in fact been permanently deactivated ... that's still conspiracy to commit murder.

ColanR 6y ago
That's how the FBI has caught terrorists in the past. Agents work with the terrorist and build a dud bomb, then arrest them when it fails to go off.
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  If you really want to see how crazy this can get, a quick search for 'voodoo doll attempted murder' will be eye-opening.
  - ttul 6y ago
    Canada lost a case against a couple of dimwitted "terrorists" that the mounties engaged in an expensive, drawn out plot to recruit them to build a bomb [1]. In that case, the conduct of police was judged to be entrapment based on a precedent in which it is written, "The state must conduct its law enforcement operations in a manner that is consonant with the community’s underlying sense of fair play and decency. It cannot manipulate suspects’ lives without limit, turning their day-to-day existence into a piece of theatre in which they are unwitting participants." [1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/judge-says-rcmp-entrapped-bc-couple-in-terror-case-overturns-guilty-verdict/article31199892/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/judge-...
    - johnyzee 6y ago
      This has happened again and again, the world over, with the purpose of playing up the perceived threat of terrorism. For example, Richard Reid, the 'shoe bomber', was mentally retarded, and caught trying to ignite the C4 he had somehow acquired, using matches.
- gonzo41 6y ago
  That seems like it sails very closely to entrapment.
  - DiabloD3 6y ago
    By any reasonable interpretation, it is entrapment, and a fair number of lawyers out there were pretty unhappy, some vocally so, with the outcome of that whole shitshow.
    - nobody9999 6y ago
      Please compare and contrast "reasonable" and "legal" interpretations. While such a comparison might rub you (and me, for that matter) the wrong way, it's the "legal" interpretation that holds in a US Article III court[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tribunals_in_the_United_States#Article_III_courts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tribunals_in_the_Unite...
      - DiabloD3 6y ago
        My point was, it rubbed lawyers the wrong way. I'm going to listen to a lawyer when they speak of their own craft.
  - maxlybbert 6y ago
    It does. My understanding is that as long as the police don’t make the suggestion, then it’s not entrapment. If the officer asks, “hey, do you wanna bomb that building?” it’s entrapment. If you ask “would you help me bomb that building?” and the officer sells you what you think is a bomb, it’s not. Of course, the officer isn’t necessarily wearing a wire or anything, and it’s possible to phrase things carefully to suggest something without literally making the suggestion, so it comes down to the officer’s testimony (“I never suggested that he commit a crime” and maybe “I did suggest that somebody ought to pay for that behavior”) versus the accused’s.
    - ALittleLight 6y ago
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  They show FBI radicalizes people and creates "terrorists", not catches terrorists. They act like criminals and intimidate people into compliance and then arrest them. But for some reason if you tried pretending to be a terrorist, you'd still be a criminal
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    > They show FBI radicalizes people and creates "terrorists", not catches terrorists. They act like criminals and intimidate people into compliance and then arrest them. > But for some reason if you tried pretending to be a terrorist, you'd still be a criminal That depends. The informant/infiltrator needs to "play along" till some extend. However, they should also not stimulate other people to commit crimes. It is a careful balance. So for example, if Alice asks Bob to make a bomb, and Bob complies (with a fake bomb), then how exactly did Bob (who works for the FBI) create a terrorist? They didn't. They caught one by pretending being one. Apart from the ability to safely catch Alice red-handed, Bob can also testify the intend of Alice. 2 in 1. Would you rather see it was Charlie who made the bomb, but then a real one? Of course not. Sometimes, this infiltration method is one of the few or the only viable way to catch a terrorist or criminal. It is not without risk though; it is high risk, high reward. Not the first option to be chosen; you want low risk, high reward options first. EDIT: in hindsight it would've been better to use different names, ie. Mallory. I leave the above as-is.
jpcosta 6y ago
You still have to prove who had the gun in the first place
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  No, actually. Let's say that you've been given a key for a locker at Grand Central Station and told there's a gun inside. We agree that I'll use the gun to shoot someone. You give me the key and I go to collect the gun. In fact, the locker is empty. The gun doesn't even exist and yet there's still a conspiracy to commit murder.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    No, actually, you need additional steps to achieve conspiracy to commit murder in that hypothetical.
    - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
      What's the legal basis for that? The "overt steps" are you giving me the key, and me going to the locker.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        Does the overt act not have to further the conspiracy?
        NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
        Yes: but don't you think that going to collect the weapon furthers the conspiracy to commit murder? There'd inevitably be argument over whether it met the required standard, which differs by jurisdiction. e.g. did it advance the conspiracy substantially? did it take the conspiracy past the point of no return?
kbenson 6y ago
It makes sense, for charges about an attempt. Presumably if you attempt to kill someone in a way that doesn't work, you may try again in a way that does later. Also, a case can probably be made that while attempted murder may not be harmful to the intended victim (in some cases), it's still harmful to society.
DoctorOetker 6y ago
it's not illegal to crack your own password hash, according to this US Gov expert witness, it's never communicated or proven what this is the hash of.
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  That is the whole point. If Manning and Assange think that a recipe for fruit salad is a hash of a root password for some U.S. Government computer and then attempt to identify a collision for it, with the goal of allowing Manning unauthorized access: that's still conspiracy.
  - DoctorOetker 6y ago
    you missed the point: what if Manning remembered his old box his own password of which he forgot, then asking this "Nathaniel Frank" does not automatically involve "Nathaniel Frank" into a conspiracy, as it is plausible Manning is asking help for non-nefarious personal reasons. It's up to the prosecution to prove that J.A. == "Nathaniel Frank" (and yes, whistleblowers have a long history of leaking to multiple players in case one or more of them are in bed with the oppressor). It's up to the prosecution to prove that "Nathanial Frank" couldn't have believed he was simply helping Manning regain access to whatever non-governmental stuff Manning has legitimate access to, and hence Manning has the right to grant others permission to crack his own hash...
    - anoncareer0212 6y ago
      *her
    - tedunangst 6y ago
      The obvious defense then would be to provide the chat log where manning says hey, I forgot the password to my laptop and really want to play some counter strike, can you help me out?
      - gamblor956 6y ago
emilfihlman 6y ago
By that logic also: "If I'm God, and we agree that I will kill everyone with my God powers, but it turns out (unbeknownst to either of us) that I'm not God, that's still conspiracy to commit murder." Promising impossibility is not a conspiracy. https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladviceofftopic/comments/6le3hy/magic_intent_and_murder/ https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladviceofftopic/comments/6le3hy...
- ColanR 6y ago
  Given that someone has actually been convicted of attempted murder by voodoo doll (ridiculous as that is), that reddit discussion sounds a bit like wishful thinking. https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2004/dec/09/attempted-voodoo-first-degree/ https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2004/dec/09/attempted-vo...
  - emilfihlman 6y ago
    A) that sounds like a legend and b) low level judges are not the measure of law.
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  I believe that what you've linked to is legally incorrect. Refer to, e.g. United States vs. Thomas: https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-united-states-v-thomas https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-u... ... which is an actual appeal court decision. The defendants were at a bar. A drunken woman collapsed. The defendants put her in their car, took her home, and had sex with her while they believed she was unconscious. In fact, the woman had died at the bar, and they had been having sex with a corpse. They could not be convicted of rape, but they could be convicted of attempted rape because they believed the woman was alive at the time. Being factually mistaken about the possibility of a crime is not a defense to a charge of attempt, conspiracy etc.
  - jacobush 6y ago
    That’s slightly charitable. They believed they raped a woman, but they actually desecrated a corpse.
monoclechris 6y ago
I'm a fairly serious Assange supporter, but there are clearly lots of children here who don't understand how much intent matters.
quelsolaar 6y ago
The problem with the analogy is that committing a murder is a crime for everyone everywhere. For a US citizen who has been given classified information it may be illegal and treasonous to leak classified US information to some one who doesn't have the clearance to get access to it. But a journalist, should have the right to ask people to come forward if they have information with a public interest, even if it is classified. If someone comes forward, they may break the law, but not the journalist. Further more, Assange is not a US citizen, and is there for under no obligation to be loyal to or protect US interests or secrets. He cant by definition be treasonous again any country besides his own. If he on the other hand, provides material support to someone committing a crime, (like helping to crack a password), then he can be tried as an accomplice. This evidence seems to imply he did not.
- doonesbury 6y ago
  Agree. Nonetheless feds are making him pay through the legal expense and stress of deflecting these charges. What I wonder more about is our own guys: how does manning and Snowden walk out the door with this info anyway? Our search procedures apparently suck. For the record my assessment of our involvement in Iraq is not kind: we should have escalated to armed intrusion to vet wmds base by base instead of invading wholesale on the reason Iraqi's were evasive. Second torture is unamerican, not reliable, and wholly wrong. Not proud at all of what we did here. Our response before after 9/11 was incompetent.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  If his defense against treason is that he's a foreign agent attacking the US, then he'll rightly end up in a POW prison. So he needs a better defense than that
  - simonh 6y ago
    It seems like he didn’t actively attack the US, he simply passed on information freely given to him by US citizens. It’s hard to see how him doing that, not being a US citizen and not being in the US, is any worse than anything hundreds of journalists do all over the world every day.
nobody9999 6y ago
>If you have a gun, and we agree that I will shoot someone with it, but it turns out (unbeknownst to either of us) that the gun has in fact been permanently deactivated ... that's still conspiracy to commit murder. IIUC, at least in the US, a charge of conspiracy requires an overt act by at least one of the conspirators[0]: "If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. If, however, the offense, the commission of which is the object of the conspiracy, is a misdemeanor only, the punishment for such conspiracy shall not exceed the maximum punishment provided for such misdemeanor." As such, in the scenario you present, unless those who discuss murder actually do something in furtherance of that discussed goal, it's not conspiracy. [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371 N.B.: IANAL
- simonh 6y ago
  Well in the example they are procuring and preparing to use a gun. That’s doing an act. Incompetently perhaps because unbeknownst to the its not a functioning firearm, but they’re still acting on their intentions.
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    >Well in the example they are procuring and preparing to use a gun. The example mentions a gun, but does not mention that it was procured for the purpose of committing murder. At least in the US, having a gun (there are more guns than people here) by itself isn't very remarkable. If, however, the gun was procured specifically for that purpose, it could be construed as an overt act. Alternatively, if someone retrieved the gun from a storage facility (as was suggested by another commenter) for the purposes of committing murder, that would still be an overt act. ISTR a case where a woman contracted with someone (who turned out to be police acting on a tip from the owner of a website that claimed to put folks in touch with hit men) to kill her husband[0]. Just asking someone to do so wasn't enough. The police had to get the woman to commit an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy (in that case, paying the undercover cop). [0] https://www.wxyz.com/news/monroe-county-woman-arrested-for-trying-to-hire-hitman-to-kill-her-ex-husband https://www.wxyz.com/news/monroe-county-woman-arrested-for-t...
cmiles74 6y ago
This gun and murder analogy strikes me as being in bad taste, in this instance. Julian Assange is not being accused of murder by the US government, the particular charges in this case revolves around a hash of a password and alleged attempts to compare that hash to a table of similar hashes and, possibly, finding the matching clear text password for that specific hash value. This is a far cry from conspiracy to commit murder, with our without a functional gun.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  Actually, that particular issue (the alleged attempt to crack a password hash) isn't covered under the Espionage Act[0]. Rather, it's a separate charge under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act[1]. And that matters because the penalties are enormously more severe for the the former than the latter. >This is a far cry from conspiracy to commit murder, with our without a functional gun. Conspiracy is defined[2] as: "If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. If, however, the offense, the commission of which is the object of the conspiracy, is a misdemeanor only, the punishment for such conspiracy shall not exceed the maximum punishment provided for such misdemeanor." As such, the example was just that, an example. Would you be less butthurt if the example was conspiracy to steal office supplies from a US Post Office, and the overt act was to bring a hand-cart to the post office in order to cart away said office supplies? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371 Edit: Fixed grammatical error

ColanR 6y ago

Summary quote: > Manning never provided the two files necessary to “reconstruct the decryption key” for the password hash, Eller testified. “At the time, it would not have been possible to crack an encrypted password hash, such as the one Manning obtained.”

ciarannolan 6y ago

> ASSANGE Agrees to Help Manning Crack a Password [1] Is this what Assange is accused of doing? 1. Receiving a password hash from Manning 2. Telling Manning he'll try to crack it 3. Following up asking for more info about it (related usernames or something) 4. Never actually cracking it and no further action Does anyone have any more specifics on what Assange actually did here to break the law? The indictment is pretty vague on this and it seems to be the central issue. [1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/downl https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/downl... (page 9)

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
Conspiracy is the agreement to commit a crime. Assange and Manning agreed to try to gain unauthorized access to some U.S. government computer system. Unauthorized computer access is a federal crime, see 18 U.S.C. section 1030. The federal conspiracy charged (18 U.S.C section 371 in this case) also requires that one of the conspirators take an 'overt act' to further conspiracy. This is to stop idle talk about crimes being prosecuted as conspiracies. In this case, Manning actually provided Assange with the hashed password. That's the overt act. But, fundamentally, the conspiracy is the agreement to commit a crime.
- ciarannolan 6y ago
  That makes sense, thanks. What is Assange's alleged overt act? Or is it just required of one of the conspirators?
  - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
    Only one.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

pera 6y ago

I still don't understand how the Eastern District of Virginia can claim that "Nathaniel Frank" was in fact Julian Assange. The reasoning presented in their affidavit looks clearly fallacious to me (starting at p13): https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2019/04/2017-12-21_Virginia_Assange_Affidavit.pdf https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2019/04/2017-12-21_Vir... There are two assumptions they use to infer the identity of NF: 1- The belief of two persons that the person who they were talking with was probably Assange. 2- That only one single person was using that jabber account. The only thing I can personally infer from the information they presented is that NF was (very likely) a member of Wikileaks at that time. What am I missing?

coldtea 6y ago
Nothing - those kind of shady "proofs" are used all the time by states. "Take a word for it" has been taken to a whole new level in the 21st century...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gamblor956 6y ago
Your not missing anything. this isn't a criminal trial it's an extradition hearing. They're not required to prove their case on the merits, just show they have sufficient facts to make a pro forma case at the criminal trial.
ChrisKnott 6y ago
The argument is based on NF referring in the first person to doing things that JA did (debate in Iceland, conference in Norway), that other members of Wikileaks didn't do.
- pera 6y ago
  As far as I can tell they only state that for the conference in Norway: "[...] Assange was identified as a 'lecturer.' A review of the other names on the list revealed no other persons known to be associated with WikiLeaks" To me the fact that they wrote "other persons known" indicates that they are not sure if there were other members present.

jonplackett 6y ago

Some background that helped me understand why any of the is is important - The government want a way to charge assange with something, that they don’t then have to also charge all the national newspapers with who helped him - because that would then be a much more blatant attack on press freedom. They want to charge him as some form of hacker instead of what it’s really about - that they don’t like what he did as a journalist.

jonplackett 6y ago
Further releasing about this, posted earlier in the week on HN. https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silent-assange-trial/ https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silen...
- singron 6y ago
  This reminds me of Particularism[0]. Instead of applying consistent moral principles to this case to determine right or wrong, they have already decided that this particular case is wrong and are figuring out what moral principles they can come up with to make it wrong. 0: https://iep.utm.edu/morlpat/ https://iep.utm.edu/morlpat/
  - MrsPeaches 6y ago
    Which in turn reminds me of the (apocryphal) quote from Óscar Benavides, former president of Peru: "For my friends everything, for my enemies the law" [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_R._Benavides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_R._Benavides
  - jonplackett 6y ago
    They do a similar thing to this with hackers in general. The various computer misuse acts essentially criminalise so many things we all do all the time - like if go to a coffee shop and put in fake info into the wifi sign up form, technically it's illegal but obviously something they'll never bother to enforce - unless they want to for some other reason. As soon as you start applying the law (or not) on a whim, you're in trouble.

yeahrighthagah 6y ago

At this point why does the US IC not just send some spook shoot the poor Assange in court, everybody knows he's a political criminal USSR style. Everybody knows he's being made an example of to scare off freedom Chinese style.

yeahrighthagah 6y ago

At this point why not just send some spook shoot the poor Assange, everybody knows he's a political criminal USSR style, everybody knows he's being made an example of to scare off freedom Chinese style.

us_failure 6y ago
They're still at the stage where they want to make it "look legitimate" to people who don't pay any attention to the details. Anyway, the extrajudicial killing will come later, when he's in a US prison awaiting trial. Epstein style.

627467 6y ago

I'm surprised why "lawfare" is not more commonly used to classify what is happening to Assange and others by Western-sphere dissidents. maybe I'm not really surprised.

gamblor956 6y ago

This isn't a trial.. It's an extradition hearing. They don't need to prove their case. They just need to make a showing of sufficient evidence that they could prove their case at trial.

liability 6y ago
It's a kangaroo court. America and the UK are both banana republics.
- dang 6y ago
  Please stop posting flamewar comments to HN, no matter how you strongly feel about the underlying issues. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - nullc 6y ago
    Who will speak up when they come for the HN moderators?
boomboomsubban 6y ago
Evidence that one of the crimes Assange is charged with never happened makes it difficult to see how they could prove their case at trial.

erwin222 6y ago

yeah, no! I offer you $1000 a liter of mother's mnilk. Contact me erwin.joosten@telenet.be

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

> “At the time, it would not have been possible to crack an encrypted password hash, such as the one Manning obtained.” Wrong. Rainbow tables have always worked, even 20 years ago.

tialaramex 6y ago
Twenty years ago Rainbow Tables didn't exist. Philippe Oechslin published his paper explaining them in 2003. Hellman's improved time-space trade-off is older, but the actual Rainbow Table, popularly used to attack Windows hashes, dates only to Oechslin's paper. The claim is that the hash is from an offline SAM. Windows by that era has an encrypted SAM file, so when it isn't running the raw hashes are actually encrypted with RC4. In principle 128-bits of RC4-enciphered data is useless. RC4 is not good encryption by 2020 standards (nor indeed in 2010) but it's enough that if the 128-bits is from an encrypted SAM they're useless. But the trouble is that tools to decrypt the SAM certainly did exist in 2010.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  > Twenty years ago Rainbow Tables didn't exist. Maybe they weren’t called rainbow tables back then, but lookup tables of pre-computed hashes for password cracking existed. I was there. However, I may be off by a year... I cannot recall the exact date I first became aware of them. I am fairly certain it was in the 90s.
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    Rainbow Tables are not just lookup tables of pre-computed hashes. Pre-computation is obvious. Hellman comes up with chained pre-computation in the 1980s. Rainbow Tables are further improvement on Hellman's idea. Let's use LM hash as the example, the core idea in LM hash is you can turn up to 7 characters of password into a 64-bit value. LM hash does this twice (so up to 14 character passwords) but we can divide it into two 64-bit hashes. In 1975 LM hash hasn't actually been invented, but if you somehow went back and showed people from 1975 how it works they can pre-compute hashes. There are 2^56 possible hashes. So if you've got somewhere to store 2^56 hashes and passwords you can do the work and then reverse any LM hash. Hmm, 2^56 is a lot though. In 1975 nobody can store this data. By 1995 LM hash does exist, and Hellman has proposed his chaining optimisations. So, you do 2^56 calculations still (this is a bunch of work but it's certainly possible) but they form long chains so now you don't need to store 2^56 answers somewhere. Maybe you store 2^40 answers, you need to do 2^16 calculations for every reverse and you need 2^40 storage and sadly your recall is now poor. Maybe it only works 80% of the time. Storing 2^40 answers in 1995 is expensive, you can't afford to do it, but the government or a rich company can. By 2005 there are Rainbow Tables. Phillipe's idea massively improved recall. You can have say 99.9% recall, store 2^40 answers and do 2^16 calculations to reverse a hash. Also in 2005, storing 2^40 answers seems reasonable, you can just walk to a store and buy many gigabytes of storage space no problem.

us_failure 6y ago

The best thing for humanity would be the fall of the USA. Their rotten, corrupt, murderous empire has gone on for long enough.

whatthesmack 6y ago
You may have jumped over a few good things about the USA...

tialaramex 6y ago

Almost all of this is about a 2013 trial and not this present proceeding at all. And the claim (from that trial) is that Manning provided Assange with bytes from an encrypted SAM or that it's only part of the password hash. It's actually pretty aggravating reading trial documents when nobody present knows what they're talking about, it might as well be a Star Trek script, this is why it's so nice when the trial judge or at least some of the lawyers know what they're talking about (e.g. the Horizon scandal in the UK) but we can't have nice things most of the time. Here's what the transcript says Manning provided: 80c11049faebf441d524fb3c4cd5351c That's 16 bytes = 128 bits = one Windows password hash. So straight away it's completely reasonable that this is in fact a Windows password hash, and in the absence of evidence of how Manning obtained that value it's only speculation that this is actually encrypted somehow (e.g. because it is from an encrypted offline SAM). And yet Assange's defence apparently has hours of such speculation on tap, for whatever they suppose that's worth. What Assange talks about doing is using Rainbow tables. This would be applicable regardless of which type of Windows hash it is (or Assange thought it was) but crucially if the password is strong then you only get a result if this 128-bit value is an LM Hash. The risible LM Hash turns the first seven characters into one 64-bit value using DES, the next seven into another 64-bit value (DES again). It doesn't work on long passwords, if you have a long password then you can't have an LM hash. This of course is one reason somehow who tried to obtain both hashes would only get one... The NT Hash is MD4(password). If the password is "qwerty" or "manning" that's not difficult to find, and Rainbow Tables that will be fairly reliable for simple passwords with NT Hash are readily available and would have been years ago too. But if the password is sixteen random characters then MD4(password) might as well be Argon2id(password) for all the good that'll do you. It's just too many combinations. So, for all we may ever know that 128-bit value is in fact a legitimate NT Hash of a good password.

baybal2 6y ago

I think the merit of the case is not about what particular thing Assangge did which warrants extradition, but the fact that extraditions are near impossible to thwart in court as such, in many common law countries, because if you are innocent, your only remedy is to go to the country demanding extradition, and trying proving that. This is so broken, and add extraditions to a long list of habeas corpus negating tools governments in the West now amass.

lexusgx 6y ago
That's not truly what's broken. If it were a truly fair system, no one would fear showing up to say they were innocent. The problem is that the courts regularly ignore due process because there isn't any incentive for them to uphold the letter of the law. The side with the more expensive team of lawyers regularly wins. If you could bet on court decisions, you would see the odds heavily in favor of the more moneyed party. There should be a monetary incentive that encourages people who can read the law to evaluate past court decisions, and that punishes legal bodies (maybe even in a criminal court) that ignore due process.
- closeparen 6y ago
  The issue is the long-standing gentleman’s agreement not to enforce the laws regarding classified information against journalists. The computer intrusion charge is prosecutors’ strategy to get him behind bars while preserving that tradition. Give the facts here, he probably would be acquitted. But then the government might decide to use the classified information laws, under which it has a slam-dunk case. Prosecutorial policy convention is not due process. Those charges are what he really has to fear if he’s extradited.

mint2 6y ago

Reading over these comments, I feel there are two common takes on the matter. And it’s shows why discussing certain topics is just painful. one side seems to be just pointing out and clarifying the laws and evidence, the side seems to refuse to accept what seems to be a straightforward explanation. You might disagree with the laws, you might think they are unfair, or think they are applied unequally or selectively, and that is fine. All those things are unarguably true in general. But by the definition of conspiracy, I don’t get why so many commenters are trying to argue that what assange did does not fit that description. If your objections were any of the reasons I mentioned earlier, that would make total sense. But rejecting that what he did technically can be described as conspiracy per the definition under United States law? It just makes you look unreasonable. Is the USA out for assange? Yes, they’ll throw anything they can find at him. And it looks like they found something. Whether that is a good state of affairs is not relevant for the discussion at hand. they’ve got him with this charge. Denying it won’t help him. Denial of a fact helps no one. Realize you lost the battle and move on so you can win the war or whatever analogy along those lines you want to use.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
>But by the definition of conspiracy, I don’t get why so many commenters are trying to argue that what assange did does not fit that description. Classifying this as "conspiracy" violates the first amendment. What he did should be expected behavior of the press, I won't just abandon this encroachment and move on.
K0balt 6y ago
There appears to be no proof that it was in fact assange who was communicating with manning. Wiki leaks affiliated? Almost certainly. Assange? No actual evidence. (that I am aware of) IMHO this is the salient weakness in the case for extradition. The fact that the same exact argument could be used against any wiki leaks affiliated individual at that time makes it a witch hunt instead of a legitimate legal proceeding.
boublepop 6y ago
A journalist receiving information from a source is not conspiracy, evne if that information is obtained illegally. That’s the core og he case, if you disagree then all the other journalistic entities involver should be on trial before we even start talking about a potential extradition for Assange. This whole endeavor is a clear and blatant attack on freedom of information. It should be clear to everyone across the globe by now. The American government does not care if it commits war crimes, however it will go to extremes to punish any journalists or whistleblowers who expose these war crimes.