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Creepy Spying System Revealed by Wikileaks, Which Then Gets Hit by DDOS Attack
- dm73 14y agosee for the leaked messages here: http://privatepaste.com/f9dd332518/weqwewqesada http://privatepaste.com/f9dd332518/weqwewqesada https://privatepaste.com/942ba3fa3d/asdasdwqe https://privatepaste.com/942ba3fa3d/asdasdwqe (source: http://cryptogon.com/?p=30775 http://cryptogon.com/?p=30775)
- notaddicted 14y agoas well, as far as I can tell the NYUD Wikileaks mirror is fine, http://88.80.13.160.nyud.net/ http://88.80.13.160.nyud.net/ , and it links a directory of torrents which is also up: http://wlstorage.net/torrent/gifiles/ http://wlstorage.net/torrent/gifiles/ . Anyway, I don't think wikileaks can seriously be stopped from disseminating information if they choose to, there are a thousand ways to spread it and zero ways to unspread it.
- smashing 14y agoSounds like a big waste of money for me. Too bad AI is so hard, and we are experimenting with a human flagging system. Unlike DMCA notices in business sector, this apparently doesn't even seem to depend have context to the significance of the transgressions, as it appears to depend on automated content collection from whatever sources they can muster. I wish it was a big conspiracy by the EVIL GOVERNMENT. But alas, it is probably a huge waste of the taxpayers' money.
- taybin 14y agoIt is getting harder to tell who is actually suffering from paranoid delusions and who is on to something. :(
- white_devil 14y agoIt's safe to assume there's something to most "conspiracy theories".
- fluxon 14y agoInternet Archive now seeds torrents of all new content, at honkin' speeds. But weren't these files released in February? Or is this a new set?
- zobzu 14y agoi'm a little scared that indeed, all mirrors are offline. Why? because it means it's actually powerful people and not "random patriots in the USA". Thus, I feel like it's a more direct hit to our freedom of speech, etc. It's also pretty obvious that no one would think Assange actually committed crimes. You'd need to be both blind and deaf to not figured that he's been framed into this ridiculous sex affair. ps: hello trapwire auditors, have a nice day!
- rizla 14y agoThe laws of where the alleged crime took place are a little more strict than the uk and usa. That said really if the alegation is made by a victim and the system want to prosecute, then he should fight the rap, not run from it. End of the day no matter how much or little we share in ideals should put anyone beyond scrutinity. When that happens you get people sending a thousand kilos of high explosives into a school bus and walking away with a book deal and secret service protection for life. If u catch my drift I reckon this is probably q bunch of patriot hackers operated by some shadier puppet masters. Ironically probably someone that's not friendly with the US
- belorn 14y agoNo allegation was made by the claimed victims. They were seeking advice on the possibility to force Assange to take a STD test, and a prosectuter independently decided to start the prosecution after reading the report. One of the victims has gotten so tired of it all that she now refuses to testify, and refuses to sign any old statements she made in regards to the whole affair.
- wpietri 14y agoI guess I'm blind and deaf then. I strongly support Wikileaks, but Assange strikes me as the sort of arrogant, narcissistic jerk that is capable of exactly what the women accused him of. Whether or not it's true, I don't know, but that's why we have courts.
- zobzu 14y ago
- NHQ 14y agoHas wikileaks ever heard of bit torrent?
- theevocater 14y agoWhile I agree, it would probably be trivial to DDOS everyone in the wikileaks swarm if they have managed to knock out all the mirrors.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- dotmanish 14y agoThey might have. But the problem for everyone would be proving authenticity of the million clones these torrents would have then. Another trojan-distribution opportunity?
- chrismsnz 14y agoSomething that seems easy to verify with a digital signature?
- derrida 14y agoYes, they use it. http://wikileaks-press.org:81/ http://wikileaks-press.org:81/ Here are the torrents. But supporter sites are getting hit at above 10gbit/sec. You try dealing with that.
- alan_cx 14y agoYes, of course they have. Most of their files are bundled and released via BT.
- oconnore 14y agoWikileaks needs to start distributing files encrypted before they announce what's inside them. It wouldn't provoke a DDOS and distributing the password after the announcement is much simpler.
- milfot 14y agoWould this not prompt every paranoid government / organisation to DDOS them?
- Jach 14y agoThey're in it for the fame, not the delivery. They could put it on public torrent networks if they really wanted it out there. (They've done the "this torrent is everything we have, encrypted, if something happens to Assange we'll release the decryption key" before though.) Thanks to the Streisand Effect the DDoS guarantees this will receive lots of attention.
- mtgx 14y agoI wonder if the US Government, presumably behind most of the DDoS attacks against them, are aware of this - that attacking them now, only puts tWikileaks back into the public's attention.
- cantankerous 14y agoI'd be a little careful with that accusation. I think there are other groups that exist that would like you to believe that the US Government is behind these attacks. I am inclined to believe that the Feds are not the ones behind the attacks because the utility of doing so legitimizes Wikileaks and draws more attention to them.
- derrida 14y agoIt is on torrent networks, but the places hosting the torrents are being attacked. This attack is above 10gbit/sec. It bought down the datacentre of one of the supporter sites. This could also take certain countries offline. Saying that, their supporter sites are run by some pretty competent system admins: here are the torrents http://wikileaks-press.org:81/ http://wikileaks-press.org:81/
- Xcelerate 14y agoI'm not sure if the system is as bad as it's made out to be. Check out http://trapwire.com http://trapwire.com. It seems it's really just used for preventative measures in high security areas (although any company can participate).
- andreyf 14y agoRT is, as usual, full of shit. TrapWire is no secret, but a public product, available to any company who wants to pay for it (see www.trapwire.com). "more accurate than modern facial recognition technology" "recorded digitally on the spot" "encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence" "the corporation's ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented" It sounds a bit ominous, but what does any of that even mean? The security video cameras have encrypted feeds into a central server, which does facial recognition? Sounds nice, but I'd be surprised if it works well enough to be useful (esp. if someone is wearing sunglasses), but not nearly as alarmed as the tone of the RT article encourages. Sounds more like fantasy technology and wasted tax money than anything else.
- killyourheros 14y agoI amazes me that people take such blatant propaganda, like RT, seriously.
- treelovinhippie 14y agoWouldn't it be something as simple as a continuous recording, uploaded to NSA/gov servers where they would then run basic facial recognition, tag each face, index them and compare them for matches in the database. Then you could track where an individual has been over time. The product may be publicly available, but the difference here is that the government is secretly installing cameras in every major public location, and building a growing database of every individual's face and movements. No individual company could do that. The government can.
- smsm42 14y agothe government is secretly installing cameras in every major public location, and building a growing database of every individual's face and movements Is there any proof of this actually happening? I mean not "there's a system that does video surveillance, so they must be spying on everybody", but actual proof that there exists the database that includes every individual's face and movements and that police is installing cameras in every major public location to maintain this database (as opposed to, you know, legitimate purposes of securing major public locations).
- tchunin 14y agoI'm sorry, but whats the point of DDOSing this release? Aren't there just a million ways to push something out? How is this effective at all?
- thatusertwo 14y agoThis is science-fiction coming alive, TrapWire seems to be a little like 'Minority Report' and 'Person of Interest'.
- phreeza 14y agoIs there any way to verify externally that there is actually a DDoS of the scale that WikiLeaks is claiming going on? Seems like it might just be a PR stunt on their side... As mentioned in other comments, there are so many other ways to distribute this type of info if you really want, and anyone savvy enough to DDoS on this scale should be aware of that, plus the information doesn't seem to be as hot as they make it out to be anyway.
- 7952 14y agoI would be surprised if a site like WikiLeaks wasn't under constant attack from any number of different parties. Where is the evidence of causality?
- saurabhnanda 14y agoI don't know how modern DDoS works, but couldn't Wikilieaks just start repeatedly broadcasting files over UDP streams. Like how it's done in Carl Sagan's Contact?
- lectrick 14y agoInstead of hacking Wired journalists and remotely wiping their devices (much to their consternation), black hat folks should do this sort of thing. That I can get behind.
- at-fates-hands 14y agoI'm wondering why it's a big surprise there are a group of anti-anonymous hackers out there who want to shut WikiLeaks down. The author loses credibility with me when he insinuates this must the government. Trust me, if the government wanted the site down, they'd do it themselves and not act like some sort of hacker group. Is it such a stretch to think the Anon's aren't the only "experts" out there?
- smsm42 14y agoSo let's see what this creepy thing does: Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. Awful and scary, isn't it? Let's now take a deep breath and read it again. We'll see how this article makes most mundane and unremarkable things sound like a spy triller, it's a nice piece of work: Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology More accurate how? Than which modern facial recognition technology? All of them together? Sounds unlikely that RT made a survey of all modern face recognition technologies. But even if they did - what exactly it allows to do more accurately and how much more accurately? From the descriptions it sounds like it is a facial recognition technology plus some pattern matching - but 99% of it is marketing-speak, so impossible to understand what it actually does. Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot So we have some data recording happening in some locations in the US. We don't know anything about these locations except that some of them are inside major US cities and some other are in known places which aren't cities. For all we know, it may be inside bank vaults in major cities, or inside private secure structures - but the authors certainly make it sound as it is practically in your bedroom. It's like they are in major cities and I am in a major city - OMG! Then these ominous surveillance points record video digitally. Oh noes! Just like my digital camera! Must be made by CIA to spy on me too. And it does it on the spot! There must be some spy stuff going on. But you heard nothing yet: then encrypted As we all know, encryption is practically synonymous with shady business. Nobody who has nothing to hide uses encryption. They do, ergo they are up to something bad. and instantaneously delivered Instantaneously! I mean, move over, physics, CIA is here! Oh, you mean they just upload their videos to the central server over https using broadband networks? Just like I do with Youtube clips? So that must mean Youtube is under CIA control too, I guess. to a fortified central database center Fortified center! Certainly sounds ominous - nobody ever that is up to any good would have any physical security in his data center that stores millions of dollars in hardware and information. Fortified means bad. It's like Mordor, dude! at an undisclosed location Undisclosed location? Did you ever hear "undisclosed location" in context that meant anything good? It's or somebody is hiding from mafia hitmen, or some spooks are meeting to discuss their spooky things. Or it's a conspiracy-speak for "they didn't tell us where their data center is because they didn't think it's our business to know where their data center is". to be aggregated with other intelligence OMG, can it get any worse? Other intelligence! What kind of other intelligence? Who cares, it's obvious aggregating video with "other intelligence" can only make it worse. Other intelligence is spookier than anything else, just let your imagination run for a bit and you'd see how scary "other intelligence" can get. It's like that face.com startup that Facebook bought - that allowed to combine facial recognition with "other intelligence" to sort facebook pictures or make logins via face recognition APIs. I didn't know those guys were CIA, I actually used them! Good thing facebook shut them down. Or maybe they just were not supposed to show this technology to the people? After all, Facebook is CIA too, so maybe they just went underground... The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation's ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented. And now's this. Some employees of these companies worked for CIA or DoD (we don't know in which capacity, but everybody that ever worked for DoD in any capacity is up to no good, it's clear) or "other government entities" - you know, Department of Education, EPA, NIH, Smithsonian, National Science Foundation - those all are "government entities", so we can cover a lot of ground here while sounding like we still talk about spies. And if we miss something, we can always say "it is assumed" - by which we mean we just assumed that because why not, but we will say it as if it is a known, even if undocumented, fact. So what we have is a regular video surveillance system with some algorithms built on top, some company founded by people with govt connections, looking probably into some juicy govt contracts on securing some of the numerous govt facilities that need securing, and some creative writers making it all sound like the CIA is out to get us while giving us next to zero information on actually what we are supposed to be afraid of and what new is in what they tell us.