Thread: How To Access Wikileaks

start here

Wikileaks.org blocked, but mirror sites proliferating: here's a partial index of indexes - Boing Boing

this is great, domain mirroring, isn't the Internet a great place or what ? watch US officials squeal like pigs

http://www.wikileaks.eu/

WikiLeaks

apparently major ISP email providers like Yahoo are blocking emails and removing emails with links to wikileaks

Recap: WikiLeaks faces more heat in the wake of cablegate
Steve Ragan
Sunday, December 05, 2010

It’s been a long week for the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. Problems started to mount after Amazon and EveryDNS forced them to shuffle their hosting. While this was happening, they also had to face political posturing and arrest warrants. The truth can be a dangerous and wonderful thing.

[Update: PayPal has frozen WikiLeaks' donation account. More informaion is here.]

WikiLeaks had moved to Amazon after their site fell victim to a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. The attack, peaking at 2 to 4 Gbps, was said to have originated from a single source. This source, Th3J35t3r, a self-titled ‘Hacktivist for good’, has been silent since word of his actions spread in the media.

The move to Amazon helped WikiLeaks remain online, but that was only the start of the problem. A day later politics entered the picture. Senator Joseph Lieberman is said to have called Amazon on December 1, to complain about their hosting of Wikileaks.

The assumption that Lieberman caused Amazon to boot WikiLeaks comes from a statement the Senator released that said in part, “After reading press reports that Amazon was hosting the Wikileaks website, Committee staff contacted Amazon Tuesday for an explanation.”

“[Amazon’s] decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material. I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them,” Lieberman’s statement added.

The French minister for industry, energy and digital economy, Eric Besson, seems to have jumped on Lieberman’s request. Reuters reported that he wrote a letter to CGIET, the agency that looks after internet use in France, looking for the means to block hosting for WikiLeaks in France. Shortly after getting the boot from Amazon, WikiLeaks moved to France’s OVH for hosting.

“The situation is unacceptable. France cannot host websites that violate diplomatic relations secrecy and endanger persons protected by diplomatic confidentiality. We cannot host sites that have been called criminal and rejected by other countries on the basis of harm to national rights,” Besson’s letter stated.

Amazon disputes the claims that they folded to political pressure, calling the reports “inaccurate”. Likewise, the reports that Amazon kicked WikiLeaks off their services due to DDOS attacks were inaccurate as well. “There were indeed large-scale DDOS attacks, but they were successfully defended against,” Amazon said.

“AWS does not pre-screen its customers, but it does have terms of service that must be followed. WikiLeaks was not following them….For example, our terms of service state that ‘you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content… that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.’,” Amazon said in a statement.

“It’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren’t putting innocent people in jeopardy…when companies or people go about securing and storing large quantities of data that isn’t rightfully theirs, and publishing this data without ensuring it won’t injure others, it’s a violation of our terms of service, and folks need to go operate elsewhere.”

To some, this statement makes it clear that Amazon is folding to political pressure. However, they do have the right as a business to follow their own rules, so terms of service violations are a valid reason to end a business relationship. Yet, in the U.S. the First Amendment to the Constitution protects WikiLeaks. It also protects Amazon.

The EFF, in a blog post, called the move unfortunate. “Indeed, Amazon has its own First Amendment right to do so. That makes it all the more unfortunate that Amazon caved to unofficial governmentpressure to squelch core political speech. Amazon had an opportunity to stand up for its customer's right to free expression. Instead, Amazon ran away with its tail between its legs.”

“While it's frustrating to think of any hosting provider cutting services to a website because it considers the content too politically volatile or controversial, it's especially disheartening to see Amazon knuckle under to pressure from a single senator. Other Internet intermediaries should now expect to receive a phone call when some other member of Congress is unhappy with speech they are hosting. After all, it worked on Amazon.”

Another contradiction to Amazon’s claims comes from both the State Department and WikiLeaks. The U.S. government flatly refused to help WikiLeakswhen asked for information that would be used to strip the cables of names, in an attempt to prevent harm.

Shortly after moving from Amazon to OVH, WikiLeaks again faced connection issues. EveryDNS, the free DNS offering of DYN Inc., cut DNS services after ongoing DDOS attacks threatened the stability of the service.

“…wikileaks.org has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites,” a statement said.

Earlier today, DYN Inc added to their original statement, noting that the issue is a difficult one to deal with. “EveryDNS.net, the world’s largest free managed DNS provider, is not taking a position on the content hosted on the wikileaks.org or wikileaks.ch website, it is following established policies so as not to put any one EveryDNS.net user’s interests ahead of any others.”

The DNS outage, DYN Inc. added was due to WikiLeaks not switching DNS providers within the amount of time between the first notice of termination and the actual severance.

For now, WikiLeaks is available on the following domains:

http://213.251.145.96/
http://wikileaks.nl/
* http://www.wikileaks.ch/

* Intermittent connection problems over the last 24 hours.

Compounding WikiLeaks’ issues with hosting are the legal problems faced by Julian Assange, the founder of the infamous organization. Earlier this week, Interpol issued a Red Notice for Assange. The Red Notice says that his offence is sex crime related and that the warrant was issued by the International Public Prosecution Officein Gothenburg, Sweden.

The move was called a persecution and not a prosecution, by Assange’s lawyer, Mark Stephens in a statement.

“Mr. Assange has repeatedly sought meetings with the Prosecutrix - both in Sweden and subsequently - in order to answer her questions and clear his name...Bizarrely, the Prosecutrix - having ignored or rejected those offers of voluntary cooperation - instead sought an arrest warrant to have Mr. Assange held incommunicado without giving his Swedish lawyer sufficient notice, access to evidence or information to take proper instructions from Mr. Assange. This actionis all the more peculiar as she has not even issued a formal summons for his interrogation or brought charges against Mr. Assange,” the statement said.

“In 28 years of practice I have never come across a prosecutor, whether in the third world or even in a totalitarian regime, where there has been such casual disregard by a prosecutor for their obligations. Given that Sweden is a civilised country I am reluctantly forced to conclude that this is a persecution and not a prosecution.”

On Friday, Assange’s Sweedish lawyer, Bjorn Hurtig told Reuters that he would fight any extradition order that seeks to send him back to Sweden over alleged sex crimes.

“If it is in a country where they speak English, I know that my co-counsel Mark Stephens will help me in fighting this extradition order and he will do so vigorously,” Hurtig told Reuters, adding that they are discussing what to do, but one thing that makes the situation harder are the threats against Assange’s life.

Assange has been in an undisclosed location since the cablegate leaks started, after death threats were made against him. Offers by Assange to speak with Swedish authorities at an embassy abroad have been rejected. The comments on extradition are due to Swedish authorities issuing a new warrant for Assange’s arrest. The new warrant was needed due to procedural errors in the first warrant. To date, Julian Assange has not been charged. He denies the sex crime allegations, calling the actions a smear campaign against him.

“I think somebody has an interest in getting Julian to Sweden and maybe asking for him to be extradited to another country (from there),” Hurtig speculated.

While the warrants and legal bickering over Assange moved forward this week, Senator Joseph Lieberman made headlines a second time with his so-called SHIELD Act (Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination).

On Thursday, Senators John Ensign, Joe Lieberman, and Scott Brown introduced the legislation, calling the amendment to the Espionage Act something that “…will help derail the very real threat posed to human intelligence sources by WikiLeaks.”

“Julian Assange and his cronies, in their effort to hinder our war efforts, are creating a hit list for our enemies by publishing the names of our human intelligence sources,” said Ensign. “…I simply will not stand idly by as they become death targets because of Julian Assange. Let me be very clear, WikiLeaks is not a whistleblower website and Assange is not a journalist.”

Lieberman added to those statements with “This legislation will help hold people criminally accountable who endanger these sources of information that are vital to protecting our national security interests.”

Wired’s Kevin Poulsen made a valid point when he noted that the SHIELD Actis aimed squarely at publishers.

“Lieberman’s proposed solution to WikiLeaks could have implications for journalists reporting on some of the more unsavory practices of the intelligence community. For example, former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was once a paid CIA asset. Would reporting that now be a crime?”

Congressman Ron Paul voiced his thoughts when he Tweeted, “In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.”

The ACLU weighed in on reports of legal actionby the U.S. by noting that they were “deeply skeptical” that prosecuting WikiLeaks would be constitutional, or a good idea.

“The courts have made clear that the First Amendment protects independent third parties who publish classified information. Prosecuting WikiLeaks would be no different from prosecuting the media outlets that also published classified documents,” Hina Shamsi, the Director of the ACLU’s National SecurityProject said in a statement.

“If newspapers could be held criminally liable for publishing leaked information about government practices, we might never have found out about the CIA’s secret prisons or the government spying on innocent Americans. Prosecuting publishers of classified information threatens investigative journalism that is necessary to an informed public debate about government conduct, and that is an unthinkable outcome.”

In the aforementioned EFF blog posting, they touched on this topic as well, reminding anyone reading that the government itself “…can't take official actionto silence WikiLeaks' ongoing publications - that would be an unconstitutional prior restraint, or censorship of speech before it can be communicated to the public.”

“No government actor can nix WikiLeaks' right to publish content any more than the government could stop the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers, which were also stolen secret government documents.”

When it comes to access itself, there have been several organizations moving to block access to WikiLeaks, including The Library of Congress, according to Talking Points Memo.

“The Library of Congress has blocked access to the Wikileaks site on its staff computers and on the wireless networkthat visitors use,” TPM said in their report.

In a statement, the LC told TPM that the block is “…because applicable law obligates federal agencies to protect classified information. Unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents' classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.”

We’ll keep following the latest in the cablegate saga. In the meantime, feel free to weigh in with your opinions on WikiLeaks.

As a final thought, what are your opinions on the remarks by Pravda, who points out how hypocritical the U.S. is being with all of the drama surrounding cablegate?

“It is the American people who should be outraged that its governmenthas transformed a nation with a reputation for freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights into a backwater that revels in its criminality, cover-ups, injustices and hypocrisies.”

As noted by Mike Masnick at Techdirt, “It's pretty sad when Pravda is lecturing the US on free speech, tolerance and respect for human rights.”

Daily updates and coverage on cablegate are available from the following:

The BBC

The Guardian

The New York Times

zcommunications.org

Originally Posted by Mid

WikiLeaks had moved to Amazon after their site fell victim to a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. The attack, peaking at 2 to 4 Gbps, was said to have originated from a single source. This source, Th3J35t3r, a self-titled ‘Hacktivist for good’, has been silent since word of his actions spread in the media.

https://th3j35t3r.wordpress.com/

Q & A With Anti-Jihadi Hacker The Jester : Information Security Resources

ok so now we have right wing nutter activists, part time hackers, thrown into the mix

priceless,

WikiLeaks server down in France: report
05 December 2010

A Swiss group that supports WikiLeaks says the website's main server in France has gone offline.

Denis Simonet of the Swiss Pirate Party said his group was currently redirecting the domain wikileaks.ch to another server based in Sweden.

Simonet told The Associated Press by phone on Sunday the switch could take several hours, but that the site that publishes leaked classified documents was still reachable through the numerical address of its Swedish server.

He was unable to immediately say why the French server stopped working.

WikiLeaks has come under attack from governments and private individuals since releasing thousands of classified US State Department messages last month.

sbs.com.au

Originally Posted by Butterfly

WikiLeaks

working

WikiLeaks Ready to Release Giant 'Insurance' File if Shut Down
December 05, 2010

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has circulated across the internet an encrypted “poison pill” cache of uncensored documents suspected to include files on BP and Guantanamo Bay.

One of the files identified this weekend by The Sunday Times — called the “insurance” file — has been downloaded from the WikiLeaks website by tens of thousands of supporters, from America to Australia.

Assange warns that any government that tries to curtail his activities risks triggering a new deluge of state and commercial secrets.

The military papers on Guantanamo Bay, yet to be published, have been supplied by Bradley Manning, Assange’s primary source until his arrest in May. Other documents that Assange is confirmed to possess include an aerial video of a US airstrike in Afghanistan that killed civilians, BP files and Bank of America documents.

One of the key files available for download — named insurance.aes256 — appears to be encrypted with a 256-digit key. Experts said last week it was virtually unbreakable.

The US Department of Defence says it is aware of the WikiLeaks insurance file, but has been unable to establish its contents. It has been available for download since July.

Assange has warned he can divulge the classified documents in the insurance file and similar backups if he is detained or the WikiLeaks website is permanently removed from the internet. He has suggested the contents are unredacted, posing a possible security risk for coalition partners around the world.

Assange warned: “We have over a long period of time distributed encrypted backups of material we have yet to release. All we have to do is release the password to that material, and it is instantly available.”

The “doomsday files” are part of a contingency plan drawn up by Assange and his supporters as they face a legal threat. He is wanted in Sweden over sexual assault allegations, and the US administration is reviewing the possibility of legal action after the release of 250,000 diplomatic cables.

Ben Laurie, a London-based computer security expert who has advised WikiLeaks, said: “Julian’s a smart guy and this is an interesting tactic. He will hope it deters anyone from acting against him.”

Nigel Smart, professor of cryptology at Bristol University, said even powerful military computers would be unable to crack the encryption. He said: “This isn’t something that can be broken with a modern computer.

You need the key to open it.”

The file is 1.4 gigabytes in size, which would be big enough for a compressed version of all the files released this year and additional data.

Assange said last year that he had been leaked a computer hard drive from an executive at Bank of America and warned this month he was planning a major release on a large American bank. He also claims to have confidential files on BP and other energy companies.

Tens of millions of personal computers were hijacked last week in an act of sabotage that crippled the WikiLeaks website. WikiLeaks revealed that a “denial of service” attack that temporarily shut down the website used a network of “zombie” computers, which were infiltrated by the hackers.

WikiLeaks is now battling for its survival. Amazon, which hosted the website, refused further access to its servers last week. A site that provided WikiLeaks with its domain name, EveryDNS.net, also cut off its service because it said it was being inundated with sabotage attacks.

Some of the contingency plans were revealed when the site re-emerged on Friday with a Swiss address, WikiLeaks.ch. The new name was provided by the Swiss Pirate party, which champions internet freedom. Assange has also set up contingency servers in Sweden.

foxnews.com

the file is encrypted so you can download it but without the password can't do much about it

I suspect the password will be given in a press conf if anything happens

Nice to know the internet can beat the censors. Thanks for the links butterfly and all.

WikiLeaks Mirrors . com

The website of WikiLeaks has been attacked. For several days it has not been directly accessible at http://wikileaks.org. The good news is that the content is still available via "mirrors."

On a mirror you will be able to access the same content as on the original WikiLeaks site. Everything will look the same. The trick is finding one, because mirrors go down. You need to be up to date on current mirrors.

WikiLeaksMirrors.com is the answer.

wikileaksmirrors.com

WikiLeaks Mirrors . com

Originally Posted by Mid

http://wikileaks.org

This is what I get,

An access to such information has been temporarily ceased
due to the order of the Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation (CRES)
under the authority of emergency decree B.E 2548 (A.D. 2005).

WikiLeaks bolsters electronic defences
Declan McCullagh,
8 December, 2010

WikiLeaks has quietly bolstered its electronic defences as its operations have come under increasing financial and political pressure.


Julian Assange's site, WikiLeaks, has adopted measures to protect itself from cyberattacks.
Photo credit: Espenmoe on Flickr

In the last few days, the portion of WikiLeaks's infrastructure that relied on a company in Reno, Nevada has been shifted outside the US to a provider in Toronto. Instead of employing only one company to direct traffic to Wikileaks.ch — currently the organisation's primary website — 14 providers are now being used to ensure redundancy in case of legal or extralegal attack.

As part of its technological counter-measures undertaken since Friday, WikiLeaks has turned to servers operated by the Swedish Pirate Party, which previously signalled support for the document-sharing effort in August. The number of mirror sites continues to grow at the pace of one every few minutes, topping 1,000 on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was denied bail on Tuesday on sexual assault-related charges in London.

For more on this ZDNet UK-selected story, see WikiLeaks armors itself to survive cyberattacks on CNET News.

zdnet.co.uk

Facebook says WikiLeaks does not violate content standards
Shane Hulgraine
08.12.2010

Despite the growing opposition facing website WikiLeaks, Facebook insist they will keep their page alive as they have not violated their current standards.

Facebook’s Andrew Noyes, manager of public policy communications, said in an email to readwriteweb.com: "The Wikileaks Facebook Page does not violate our content standards nor have we encountered any material posted on the page that violates our policies."

Twitter had previously said that it would not censor WikiLeaks (hashtags - #cablegate and #censorship) from its trending topics.

Wikileaks has suffered some major blows since the release of the sensitive US cables, including the arrest of founder Julian Assange as well as payment issues thanks to account suspension by PayPal, MasterCard and Visa Europe.

siliconrepublic.com

Swedish micropayment system continues to channel funds to WikiLeaks
Dec 9, 2010

Stockholm - Swedish-based micropayment system Flattr said Thursday it was to continue to channel donations to the WikiLeaks organization.

Credit-card giants MasterCard and Visa recently halted payments to the whistleblowing site, resulting in attacks Wednesday on their websites from hackers supporting WikiLeaks.

The leaker site has generated headlines - and criticism from politicians and others - over the recent release of classified US diplomatic cables.

Flattr chairman Linus Olsson said donations would continue to be channelled to WikiLeaks 'as long as a court does not state it is illegal.'

'If our users want to give money to Wikileaks, we won't say anything about it,' Olsson told the Sydsvenskan daily.

The micropayment system was launched by Olsson and Peter Sunde earlier this year, and aims at offering members a possibility to pay a small fee for internet content.

Sunde was also a founder of the controversial Pirate Bay website used to swap films and music.

A Swedish appeal court last month sentenced Sunde and two other defendants to jail terms and damages for their part in running the Pirate Bay site.

monstersandcritics.com

Wikileaked is a new foreign policy journal that covers nothing but the stories emerging from Wikileaks's leaks, including the latest batch of #cablegate leaks.

It looks like an exhaustive blow-by-blow of all the revelations contained in the leaked cables -- something I've been looking for.

There are at least four different Wikileaks stories: the intelligence in the cables, the reaction to that intelligence, the debate over the ethics of releasing the cables, and the news about Julian Assange.

I find them all interesting, but I'm much more interested in the content of the cables themselves, put into context.

Wikileaked is my new go-to source for that information -- despite the fact that its publisher is owned by the Washington Post, which has led the pack in stupid, reactionary attacks on #cablegate (ironic, given WashPo's own history with the Watergate leaks).

Wikileaked (via Resource Shelf)

boingboing.net

Reporters Without Borders to host mirror site for WikiLeaks
Rachel McAthy
21 December 2010



Reporters Without Borders today announced that it will host a mirror website for the leaked US diplomatic cables being published by WikiLeaks.

Earlier this month, Reporters without Borders (RSF) said it condemned any measures taken to censor websites or news media which had published the material.

According to a report on the RSF website, the mirror site will be launched tomorrow at wikileaks.rsf.org, but it already appears to be available.

The organisation said it is hosting the site as a "gesture of support" for the WikiLeaks.

"This is a gesture of support for WikiLeaks' right to publish information without being obstructed," it said in a report.

"We defend the free flow of information on the internet and the protection of sources, without which investigative journalism cannot exist."

But it added the partnership will be "constantly reassessed" based on the future activities of WikiLeaks.

"We are doing this solely as part of the partnership that WikiLeaks has established with news media," it added.

According to WikiLeaks more than 2,000 mirror sites have been set up across the world at the time of writing, admist claims the main site is under "heavy attack".

journalism.co.uk

DDoS Fears Shatter WikiLeaks Mirror Site Hosting
Fahmida Y Rashid
December 24, 2010

Web host SiteGround has suspended at least two WikiLeaks mirror sites, citing fears of disruptive attacks

First it was WikiLeaks. Now, several mirror sites appear to be in the crosshairs, as another Web host, this time SiteGround, suspended accounts claiming the sites violated its terms of service, engaged in illegal activity and were at risk from potential distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

According to a post by Marcia Hofmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a WikiLeaks mirror was shut down by its host, SiteGround, as result of pressure from its upstream provider, SoftLayer. SoftLayer claimed the mirror WikiLeaks site violated the company’s acceptable use policy and terms of service, wrote Hofmann.

Action Demanded For Vague Reasons



A Google search turned up at least two users who claimed their WikiLeaks mirrors had been shut down by SiteGround. While the EFF post did not identify the mirror’s owner by name, the stories were identical.
One user, Mark McCoy, a self-professed anarchist, posted on his blog the entire email thread between SiteGround, SoftLayer and himself. SiteGround initially informed McCoy that “some illegal activity” had been performed through his site which “severely” violated SiteGround’s Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy. The letter indicated the complaint came from SoftLayer.

SiteGround said in the letter that when “illegal activity” is detected, the company had to “take immediate actions to stop that activity”, or risk having the entire server “unplugged”. SiteGround said McCoy needed to scan his computer with antivirus software, change his account’s password, and delete all the infringing files in the directory. The infringing files, according to the list, were the WikiLeaks cables that had been uploaded to his account.

“Before I delete the ‘evidence’, could you tell me what the exact violation is?” wrote McCoy, noting that the initial email had implied he had malware or an exploit on the site, not HTML and JavaScript files.

Just Comply

McCoy pressed SiteGround for actual details on the violation but the host declined to do so, noting that since the order to suspend his account came from SoftLayer, “We had to comply”.

According to the chain of letters posted on the blog, McCoy then wrote to SoftLayer to discover the exact violation. As there were no further updates, it appears SoftLayer never responded, but McCoy does not maintain a mirror at this time.

According to Hofmann, a customer who had been shut down by SiteGround was told SoftLayer wanted the mirror taken down because it was worried about the potential for DDoS attacks. The user pointed out that no attack had happened and this rationale would allow the company to “use hypothetical future events” to take down any site, Hofmann wrote.

“It’s incredibly disappointing to see more service providers cutting off customers simply because they decide (or fear) that content is too volatile or unpopular to host,” wrote Hofmann.

Slippery Slope Of Censorship

Internet intermediaries need to stick up for their customers, not undermine their freedom to speak online, according to Hofmann.

She said censorship was a “slippery slope”, with the first victim being WikiLeaks which was soon followed by a mirror. She wondered whether a news organisation that posted cables or analysis of the documents could be knocked offline. “If intermediaries are willing to use the potential for future DDoS attacks as a reason to cut off users, they can cut off anyone for anything,” said Hofmann.

WikiLeaks lost its Web and DNS services shortly after it began posting the leaked cables. Since then, it has moved to non-US based providers and relies on more than 1,000 mirror sites to stay online.

eweekeurope.co.uk