Has WikiLeaks Morphed Into A Malware Hub? (backchannel.com) 125
Slashdot reader mirandakatz writes:
In releasing an unredacted database of emails from the Turkish party AKP, WikiLeaks exposed the public to a collection of malware -- and even after a Bulgarian security expert pointed this out publicly, the organization only removed the select pieces of malware that he identified, leaving well over a thousand malicious files on the site.
That AKP leak also included the addresses and other personal details of millions of Turkish women, not unlike the recent DNC leak, which included the personal data of many private individuals. WikiLeaks says this is all in the name of its "accuracy policy," but the organization seems to be increasingly putting the public at risk.
The article opens with the question, "What the hell happened to WikiLeaks?" then argues that "Once an inspiring effort at transparency, WikiLeaks now seems more driven by personal grudges and reckless releases of information..."
That AKP leak also included the addresses and other personal details of millions of Turkish women, not unlike the recent DNC leak, which included the personal data of many private individuals. WikiLeaks says this is all in the name of its "accuracy policy," but the organization seems to be increasingly putting the public at risk.
The article opens with the question, "What the hell happened to WikiLeaks?" then argues that "Once an inspiring effort at transparency, WikiLeaks now seems more driven by personal grudges and reckless releases of information..."
No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist, although the principle is much older.
Betteridge's law of headlines - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Another headline (Score:2)
Can any headline that ends in a question mark be answered by the word no?
Blah Blah Blah...
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
How do trolls get voted insightful?
Sometimes a freshly painted bridge can fool people.
Re: No. (Score:4, Insightful)
You can answer with no, but that doesn't mean it's the right answer.
Being obtuse about a humorous law is not the right answer either.
Nonetheless, all the below silly headlines on Slashdot's front page can be answered "no":
Has WikiLeaks Morphed Into A Malware Hub?
No.
Ask Slashdot: Is KDE Dying?
No.
Can Cow Backpacks Reduce Global Methane Emissions?
No.
Re: (Score:3)
Can Cow Backpacks Reduce Global Methane Emissions?
No.
Oh, shit I thought you were making that up to be humorous. No, that is a real headline on Slashdot. What the fuck, why do I even visit this site anymore?
Re: (Score:2)
Hehe, shit indeed. Headlines with question marks underestimate the intelligence of their readers, especially on a site like this.
Re: No. (Score:1)
Perhaps not the right answer. The timing of the Turkish release was too political to ignore. Releasing what is basically a giant leadership smear immediately after the failed coup that many within Turkey blaimed on the CIA makes their motives extremely questionable.
I'd rather the question, are they are now directly under governmental control.
http://nytimes.com/2016/08/03/... [nytimes.com]
What the hell happened to Slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Once an inspiring effort at tech news, Slashdot now seems more driven by marketing and reckless government propaganda...
Re: (Score:1)
Mod this up +10
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I modded down.
Why? Because whining about Slashdot is annoying, and the claim that this is driven by government propaganda strikes me as highly dubious and really not a part of an intelligent conversation. The idea that Slashdot is getting astroturfed by the CIA is part of what I really hate about Slashdot: the whiny, delusional self-importance of a bunch of entitled old engineers.
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Found the spook
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I modded down.
Why? Because whining about Slashdot is annoying, and the claim that this is driven by government propaganda strikes me as highly dubious and really not a part of an intelligent conversation. The idea that Slashdot is getting astroturfed by the CIA is part of what I really hate about Slashdot: the whiny, delusional self-importance of a bunch of entitled old engineers.
The idea that Slashdot is getting astroturfed by the CIA is part of what I really hate about Slashdot: the whiny, delusional self-importance of a bunch of entitled old engineers.
You underestimate how much time it takes to astroturf.
The so called "cybercommandos" typically write the same trolly post and then throw it out on a bunch of minor pages.
It takes like 10 minutes to write the post and then a few seconds per page to push it out.
The cost to cover all major pages and a large part of insignificant ones is pretty small.
During the annexation of Crimea pretty much everything that was slightly larger than personal blogs were targeted by the Russian counterpart of those propaganda wa
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Once an inspiring effort at tech news, Slashdot now seems more driven by marketing and reckless government propaganda...
Domestic propaganda was re-legalized three years ago [rt.com]. That's a big part of it. The globalists know that trust in the mainstream media, which they have long controlled, is eroding, especially with the youth. Grassroots is the only way to reach a large number of people now.
Hillary Clinton openly admits that she will take direction from the globalist, secretive Council on Foreign Relations [youtube.com]. David Rockefeller, a chairman of the board of the CFR, openly admits that a world government is the goal. [youtube.com]
Donald Trump wan [gawker.com]
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People moved to soylentnews [soylentnews.org]?
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People moved to soylentnews [soylentnews.org]?
Some people moved to pipedot, but not enough. Pipedot.org is okay, if a little slow at times.
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Other nations have vast teams of paid mil, gov staff, AC's and sock puppet accounts.
British army creates team of Facebook warriors (31 Jan 2015)
https://www.theguardian.com/uk... [theguardian.com]
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Good grief (Score:3, Insightful)
I've really been trying to avoid adding to the growing cries of "Slashdot has turned into a dirty mouthpiece for the FBI/NSA/name-your-TLA," but the stream of agenda-laden hit pieces littering up the front page doesn't seem to be slowing. -PCP
Re:Good grief (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the result of those (in)security services leaning on journalists and researchers who work with Wikileaks. By depriving them of the manpower to go through the leaked material and sanitize it, they have left Wikileaks with only two choices: publish or don't publish.
And now they get to push stories like this, that deflect attention away from the content of the leaks.
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Of course, Wikileaks shouldn't be attacking anyone. Just providing a platform to let whistleblowers get the stuff out, and yes, applying some minimal amount of journalistic responsibility to the process - like not going on TV and pretty much admitting you're carrying out vendettas...
Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. Let's shut it down. And ban encryption.
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Fortunately... (Score:1)
There are these security agencies that do their best to protect us all from bad things. We are lucky to have them in situations like this.
What grudge? The editor's? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which personal grudge does Wikileaks represent?
Should Wikileaks not release information given to it because it belongs to someone that it opposes?
If Wikileaks removed malware from email then it would be editing the raw information given to it. Wikileaks's goal is to provide raw information, unlike that of mainstream journalism.
It's not Wikileaks's role to scan email for viruses or prevent us from getting the raw data given to it.
Wikileaks doesn't represent any political position aside from the push for the freedom of information. It doesn't choose what information is given to it and information given to it is released once verified to be authentic.
The question you should be asking is of the people that supply and have the potential to supply information to Wikileaks, what grudges do those people have?
If they had a grudge against you and sent information to Wikileaks, would it be Wikileaks that has the grudge or the people that send the information?
Re:What grudge? The editor's? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is. See how easy that was to rebut? Now we could get into reasons why one would argue for either position so that this could actually qualify as a discussion rather than a diatribe. Some reasons for it being Wikileak's role: distributing information that actively attacks the recipient, like a smallpox-ridden blanket, and without even warning the recipient of that fact, is counterproductive and morally dishonest. Damaging your audience under the banner of "raw information" while failing to openly disclose one of the more significant aspects of the information... really?
Well that's a bit of revisionist history [vanityfair.com], isn't it? I mean, first they redacted information, then they stopped. Yet they still redact source information, because, otherwise, you might be able to determine a source, and that would be bad for Wikileaks.
Wikileak's stated goals vary depending upon the side of Assange's very tiny bed that he woke up on that morning. However, their actions most assuredly represents the personal grudges of Assange himself. Wikileaks does not provide raw information, it provides information curated by Assange for Assange's personal purposes, and you'd do well to remember that.
Re:What grudge? The editor's? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good does come out of Wikileaks. But Assange's primary purpose is to make Assange feel important and keep him in the news.
Do we care? (Score:3)
Good does come out of Wikileaks. But Assange's primary purpose is to make Assange feel important and keep him in the news.
Is that something we care about?
You could say that about anyone doing good or trying to change the world. Hell, you could say that about Jesus.
The implication is that "he's not all that great", when in fact he's changed the political landscape a little, and for the better.
Yeah, right. He's not all that great, let's pick any complicated edifice anywhere and consider it from any one of myriad points of view and we'll come up with at least one thing that paints it in a negative light.
You weigh the good with th
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Hell, you could say that about Jesus.
Assange, for all his faults, exists.
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If being on a "to disappear" list means you get to live in a mansion in the English countryside practically free of worry, then it's no wonder so many people are desperately trying to get on it.
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Which moron moded the parent as "insightful"?
Assange "lives" [youtube.com] right in the middle of the polluted city of London, holed up in a small room in the Ecuador embassy; because the (slaves-to-the-states) British government is spending millions to keep police outside 24-hours so as soon as he steps outside, they'll extradite him to the torture hole in Guantanamo setup by the free and great United States of Evil.
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It is of concern to know who received what malware. Is it generic spam or meme forwarding, or targeted social engineering against particular officials?
Still, they could remove links and replace it with a pointer to a malware db they create, for anyone so interested.
Re:What grudge? The editor's? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is. See how easy that was to rebut?
That's not a rebuttal; that's taking an opposing position with no argument (or evidence) to back up your position.
A rebuttal might look like:
It may not be the job of WikiLeaks to scan emails for malware, but it can be argued that it should be. Their goal is to release information into the hands of people who can do something with it. Those people are mostly journalists with limited computer security knowledge, compared to, say, most of us here on Slashdot, and it is in the best interests of WikiLeaks to ensure that we can trust the information coming from them.
Although Wikileaks tries to release information as raw as possible, they do have a legitimate reason to alter it; namely the protection of sources and protection of people not directly targeted by the leak. Since they are already altering the information to protect sources, it is surely no great ethical stretch to protect recipients as well.
See? No only did I rebut his position, I acknowledged his arguments and demonstrated that they actually supported my case better than his case.
Re: (Score:1)
You certainly are a childish cunt. This is why quality women think we are untouchable.
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Plants made to ruin credability (Score:4, Insightful)
I really don't care.
Wikileaks is the only place around that still fights against corporations and governments. No one else does, and its always going to be lined up and screwed with to try and stop this from happening.
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Nope. Trump also does.
What happened? No security. (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically Wikileaks has nobody there who is competent enough to actually implement a security framework for the site.
So, as a result, it basically becomes a dumping ground for all this crap.
Thus, when examples are pointed out to them, all they can do is nix the examples.
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I don't suppose you've considered the possibility that there's real value in being able to review an unredacted email database from the perspective of "given the malware specimens noted in these archives, here's a possible list of other parties who may have already had access to this data weeks/months/years ago." -PCP
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Basically Wikileaks has nobody there who is competent enough to actually implement a security framework for the site.
So, as a result, it basically becomes a dumping ground for all this crap.
Thus, when examples are pointed out to them, all they can do is nix the examples.
Wikileaks has withstood countless efforts to get their site offline, sometime by dedicated groups and/or state sponsored actors. You may remember how all hell broke loose with cablegate, including DDOS [arbornetworks.com] and Senator Lieberman's call to Amazon [techdirt.com]. Calling Wikileaks incompetent at security is completely ridiculous.
I bet that the whole thing went down like this: author of this backchannel article wanted to rag on Wikileaks for their dissemination of personal details, and wanted to bring up email #117 [cloudfront.net] as prime examp
Quick question (Score:2)
Basically Wikileaks has nobody there who is competent enough to actually implement a security framework for the site.
Quick question: When you say that there is no security framework on the wikileaks site, what are you referring to?
it was always driven by personal grudges (Score:3)
"Once an inspiring effort at transparency, WikiLeaks now seems more driven by personal grudges and reckless releases of information..."
Wikileaks was always about embarrassing people.
Re: (Score:2)
You can't publish what hasn't been leaked. And what's a better motivation for a hacker than a personal grudge?
This is rather worrysome (Score:2)
AKP is awfully close to APK.
Not even close for stopping online threats (Score:1)
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Ads rob speed, security (malvertising), privacy (tracking).
Hosts add speed (hardcodes/adblocks), security (bad sites/poisoned dns), reliability (dns down), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) natively.
Works vs. caps & PUSH ads.
Avg. page = big as Doom http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... [theregister.co.uk] & ads = 40% of it.
Hosts != ClarityRay blockable (vs. souled-out to admen inferior wasteful redundant slow usermode addons)
Less power/cpu
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You really should get a place in Slashdot Hall of Fame.
It depends only on where you stand (Score:5, Insightful)
When they leak shit about people you don't like: "...an inspiring effort at transparency..."
When they leak shit about people you support: "...driven by personal grudges and reckless releases of information..."
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They're equally hated by everyone, which means they are obviously on the right track and doing something good.
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When clearly illegal content described by the FBI on the national news isn't enough to get you jailed, why bother?
I believe Hilary could shoot Trump to death in a debate live on camera, and never see jail.
So easy to corrupt (Score:3, Insightful)
It's been a long while since Wikileaks was a scruffy little band of freedom fighters. Unfortunately, they've become an outfit used by oligarchs, intelligence services and dictators to settle scores, gain advantage and destroy enemies. And this happened partially because Julian Assange understandably developed something of a martyrdom complex while he was hiding from rape charges and allowed his self-regard to run out of control and is now easily manipulated. It's all pretty predictable if you look at the dramatic arc of the story.
Wikileaks changed the world, and changed along with it, trivializing their mission and becoming what they were trying to defeat. They've been co-opted and are now they're a joke that posts online polls of the US presidential race. They've become Breitbart. They've become Gawker without the accountability. They're just another organization of online trolls.
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/... [twitter.com]
Tell me about the public, again. (Score:2)
Please tell me which kind of general public will download and open any kind of leaked information from Wikileaks, and then I'll worry.
On second thoughts, if that happened, it would mean that the public had started going to the source of the news to build their own opinions. So a couple of viruses would be a small price to pay for such a positive development.
Re: Tell me about the public, again. (Score:3)
Don't worry, the public is fine - this is just another CIA hit piece.
Putinism (Score:1)
No. (Score:2)
Problems Sleeping At Night? (Score:1)
This post about wikileaks dying seems suspicious.. (Score:1)
Turkey? Look no further than the DNC for anyone trying to destroy Wikileaks reputation. Julian Assange basically just took a big dump on Hillary Clinton's front door and set it on fire. Suddenly Wikileaks suddenly becomes a malware hub right afterward. What a strange coincidence.
Hmmm.... (Score:2)
So, you're saying they turned into Anonymous?