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Anonymous Launches a WikiLeaks For Hackers 96

Posted by Soulskill from the now-with-one-hundred-percent-fewer-rape-allegations dept.
siliconbits writes "Despite countless WikiLeaks copycats popping up since the secret-spilling site first dumped its cache of State Department cables last year, the new generation of leaking sites has produced few WikiLeaks-sized scoops. So instead of waiting for insider whistleblowers, the hacker movement Anonymous hopes that a few outside intruders might start the leaks flowing."
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Anonymous Launches a WikiLeaks For Hackers More

Anonymous Launches a WikiLeaks For Hackers

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  • Wikileaks is wikileaks for hackers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 03, 2011 @05:26AM (#36645700)

    Why can't hackers just send their leaks to wikileaks?

    • Re:Wikileaks is wikileaks for hackers (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday July 03, 2011 @05:38AM (#36645732)

      Because it would probably be hard to be credible if you rely on sources that are a far cry from legal. And while whistleblowers are certainly breaking contracts by handing out sensitive information, it is usually not illegal to do so. The whistleblower might face civil charges (for breaking contract), but it usually does not stretch into the criminal area. It's a totally different case with a true 'outsider' hacker.

      The difference also carries over to someone publishing the information, afaik. I could well see how touching (and even more, publishing) information acquired by criminal means could be quite dangerous.

      Also, WikiLeaks usually takes care to verify the source and make sure that it's not fabricated. It's kinda hard with hackers who, by their very nature, won't disclose a lot about who they are and how they got the files.

      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Assange was a hacker and Bradley Manning was, arguably, one too. The Manning leak was also extremely illegal. So I'm not seeing any evidence that they care about how the data is acquired. From what you're saying, it sounds like the anonymous knock-off of wikileaks will just do a worse job guaranteeing that the leaks are legit. I imagine that it will end up about as accurate as encyclopedia drammatica.

        • Re:Wikileaks is wikileaks for hackers (Score:5, Informative)

          by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday July 03, 2011 @06:32AM (#36645862)

          Manning broke his NDA by relaying the information, afaik he didn't "hack" it, he had access to it due to his work area, of course he had to sign an NDA to keep it secret and he broke this NDA. Illegal... well, the US army certainly has a civil case against him, and due to the nature of the information it may even be a criminal one. I cannot see what law Wikileaks broke. I didn't read the Aussie legal code, but it would be the only country I know where publishing the info of foreign governments is a crime.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Kanel ( 1105463 )

            The army has a civil case against him? I thought he was facing court martial.

            • Being in the army makes this a special case - they have their own seperate legal system, with things like court martials and military tribunals. The normal legal princibles don't apply in there.

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by zill ( 1690130 )

                In other words, GP is wrong. There's no such as thing as NDA and civil suits in military tribunals.

            • The army has a civil case against him? I thought he was facing court martial.

              He is facing court martial for a variety of criminal acts.

              Bradley Manning Charged With 22 New Counts, Including Capital Offense [wired.com]

              The Army has filed 22 new counts against suspected WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, among them a capital offense for which the government said it would not seek the death penalty.

              The charges, filed Tuesday but not disclosed until Wednesday, are one count of aiding the enemy, five counts of theft of public property or records, two counts of computer fraud, eight counts of transmitt

          • The army has its own laws, civilian laws don't apply to him.

            • Re:Wikileaks is wikileaks for hackers (Score:5, Informative)

              by Runaway1956 ( 1322357 ) on Sunday July 03, 2011 @08:15AM (#36646078) Homepage Journal

              Correction - civilian law does apply to military personnel, but military law is like an overlay on top of civilian law.

              Example, a sailor who commits a robbery in Virginia Beach is apprehended by the police, and charged. He can and will be charged by the state of Virginia with whatever various and sundry crimes they can attach to that robbery, stand trial, and probably be sentenced. The Navy, meanwhile, will carry him as "UA", or an unauthorized absence. If and when our sailor gets out of jail, he should then report to his commanding officer - who will likely then file charges of being UA and/or desertion.

              In Manning's case, I'm fairly sure that the DOJ could make a number of civilian federal laws stick - but they aren't likely to go to that much trouble. Military law is quite adequate for the case.

              • False, sorta. What you are talking about is the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) [about.com], which is an overlay of sorts, but takes precedence over any civil cases.

                To use your example, if they commit a robbery in Virginia Beach, the can/will be tried under the UCMJ first. Should the case not be heard under the UCMJ, then state or city can pick it up. Take a look at Article 122 for Robbery.

                Kit it up a notch, such as armed robbery or murder, then they can and will be tried under the UCMJ. The punishment will be

          • Manning broke his NDA by relaying the information, afaik he didn't "hack" it, he had access to it due to his work area, of course he had to sign an NDA to keep it secret and he broke this NDA. Illegal... well, the US army certainly has a civil case against him, and due to the nature of the information it may even be a criminal one. I cannot see what law Wikileaks broke. I didn't read the Aussie legal code, but it would be the only country I know where publishing the info of foreign governments is a crime.

            The wonderful thing about working for the federal government is that things that would be civil actions if you were working for a corporation tend to be criminal actions when you do it to the federal government. I assure you that the NDA for classified information clearly states criminal, not civil, penalties for violating it. This is true whether you are military, civilian, or contractor. That Manning falls under the UCMJ has relatively little impact on the situation.

          • I didn't read the Aussie legal code, but it would be the only country I know where publishing the info of foreign governments is a crime.

            There's no legal proceedings against Assange in Australia, so I don't know where you're bringing that in. The Australian Federal Police (AFP, Australia's FBI) noted that they co-operated with Americans investigating, but that's not out of the ordinary given reciprocal agreements in place. The Attorney General also noted that they're provided Assange with consular assistance during his British extradition case, so the Aussie government has nothing against him in the legal sense.

        • From what you're saying, it sounds like the anonymous knock-off of wikileaks will just do a worse job guaranteeing that the leaks are legit. I imagine that it will end up about as accurate as encyclopedia drammatica.

          There may be clues as to the source of the Anonymously leaked cables and we can look for signs of falsification, such as references to shitty teachers being mean and handing out too much homework or phrases such as 'wtf n00b' or references to being grounded in the cables.

      • Re:Wikileaks is wikileaks for hackers (Score:5, Insightful)

        by FoolishOwl ( 1698506 ) on Sunday July 03, 2011 @08:47AM (#36646166) Journal

        This is an important point. Part of what authenticates leaked information is the identity of the whistleblowers, their staus as insiders with privileged access to information, and their willingness to sacrifice in order to publish information. Much of this is lost with anonymous hacktivists. In paticular, when all that's known of the source of information is that it came from an anonymous source, it's harder to disprove the common defense that the leaked information was cooked up by a hostile rival.

      • WikiLeaks usually takes care to verify the source and make sure that it's not fabricated.

        Really? In every interview with Assange they claim they verify documents, not sources as that is all they have access to. Can you name a leak where to leaker was not open about who he or she was and that leaker was verified?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Yvanhoe ( 564877 )
        Then what's the difference with pastebin ?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why can't hackers just send their leaks to wikileaks?

      Wikileaks doesn't publish all data they receive. They only publish high quality data that has been vetted first. I don't think people like Anonymous want to take orders from Julian Assange -:) He's over 30!, and most people over thirty years of age are not trust-worthy (take this with a nudge and a wink if you will, but I'm over 30 and I know what I speak of).

      Also, with Wikileaks, you have to rely on people with morality and courage to leak documents (as oppose to having them deliberately stolen from outsid

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Leebert ( 1694 ) *

      Why can't hackers just send their leaks to wikileaks?

      Well, I-- I'll tell you why... Uh, because... hackers are not good at dealing with customers!

    • Because many hackers do like to brag to like-minded individuals even if they don't need to, that's one of the main reasons they hack in the first place, and yet can't stand to remain completely anonymous at the same time.

      And also, the CIA hasn't broken Julian Assange yet. Until they can compromise Julian Assange, they'll need another hacker to pose as an alternative distribution channel (for instance, like the guy who gave up Bradley Manning, or some other hacker they've just arrested, but not prosecuted ye

    • They hope intelligent people will inherently trust "Anonymous cowards" more than they trust Public-faced heroes that can be bought or silenced. I guess they're not happy with the sudden fall of the original Wikileak's Assange [wikipedia.org] into ... relative, er, anonymity after all the noise with the US and europe's Interpol back in January.

      The sadness is that I don't trust Anonymous' individuals with "anonymizing" whistleblow data. Though one person will legally own the wiki's resources, it ain't no responsible Assange.

  • Fools (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They are using .tk domains, just goes to show you what fools you're dealing with. Those domains won't last long. [www.dot.tk]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by psy0rz ( 666238 )
      i was amazed by that as well

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lennie ( 16154 )

      I don't really know much about .tk domains, what is the problem ?

      • Re:Fools (Score:4, Informative)

        by metalmaster ( 1005171 ) on Sunday July 03, 2011 @06:28AM (#36645846)
        I didnt read the .tk TOS, but the wiki alludes to content policing

        There are also content restrictions for free domains, banning sites containing sexual content, drug use, hate speech, firearms, and copyright infringement.

        Wikileaks may find itself violating all of those within a short time. Who knows.

        • Well either I need to be more creative in getting to the site or they have already been shut down, because I keep getting redirected. Oh well, maybe I just need to dig up some proxies.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        .tk domains are free (you can pay for a better service but people mostly use them because they are free to register).

        Part of the TOS is that they must get at least one hit every 30 days and if you're doing anything against the TOS you lose the domain. Hence .tk domains are rarely around for long and are used as throwaway domains.

    • Well they can't use .gov, that would be too obvious.

  • A good strategy for whistleblowers (Score:3)

    by Kanel ( 1105463 ) on Sunday July 03, 2011 @06:45AM (#36645896) Journal

    A whistleblower who wants to make certain documents of his/her employer public faces a problem:
    How do I stop the leak being traced back to me?
    This is especially relevant when you'r employed with the government, which in theory is very capable of tracing the origin of leaks, but every whistleblower runs this risk.
    But isn't it a great strategy to then tip off outsiders and make them retrieve and distribute the documents instead? letting the version number of old software at the office slip, or maybe a file path or two, could be enough. Maybe a USB stick could be "stolen" ? Even if your name gets implied, you can feign innocence in the court.

    • A really clever anti-leak system could use some form of stenography in the document text itsself - say, every fifty-fourth capital letter may or may not be decapitalised. It's look like the occasional typo, quite unnoticeable unless you know what to look for, but it's enough to hide a hidden identifier uniquely encodeing the person who requested the document.

      • Re:A good strategy for whistleblowers (Score:5, Informative)

        by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Sunday July 03, 2011 @07:07AM (#36645934)
        Incidentially, this is common practice in the field of cartography. Map-making is big business, espicially in urban or suburban areas where maps need updating every few years. To prevent competitors copying their maps, publishers often include deliberate mistakes - usually an extra dead-end road or something of the type, so it wouldn't interfere with anyone trying to nagivate. As the extra road doesn't really exist, should it turn up in another publisher's book of maps it serves as definative proof of copying.
        • If every map has a deliberate mistake, that would explain the hopelessness of SatNavs, presumably they copy and merge every map to create one that is especially pants..

  • I guess they figured they could replicate the 'Big Profits' [slashdot.org]of WikiLeaks by adopting their business model:

    1) have people donate both content and operating funds
    2) keep operating expenses below donated funds
    3) big profits!

  • IT'S A TRAP (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    (insert ackbar.gif)

  • This can be a tool to damage our freedom (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Well well, and I thought it could not get any worse.

    In this last month, we've seen "anonymous brazil" and "lulzsec brazil" branches trying to start up. They did a lot of DDoS on the federal government websites.

    The clinch? Some people are trying to pass a law that updates the criminal code to punish internet crimes, and one extremely important vote about it happened last week. Most of us are _against_ this criminal code update in the form it is currently being pushed, because the usual suspects included a

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by bky1701 ( 979071 )
      I find it absolutely amazing when morons like you blame activists for the government cracking down on activism. You're no better than the people who called sit-ins trespassing.

      How about instead of posting about how "*cry* they're taking away my freedoms because of lulzsec," you actually get off your lazy, apathetic ass and do something about the people trying to pass the unconstitutional laws you're complaining about? I've got a clue for you, since you've got none: they would pass whatever laws they do n

      • I find it absolutely amazing when morons like you blame activists for the government cracking down on activism. You're no better than the people who called sit-ins trespassing.

        Sit-ins are trespassing, it's an attempt to force overnment to over-react and draw attention to a situation. Similarly, provoking anti-hacivist laws should encourage a debate to see which side socieity is on.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by zhazam ( 2315520 )

        Holy making assumptions, Batman!

        People can post on internet forums -and- participate in politics/activism.

  • **Article:**

    a list of the personal details of Orlando officials including addresses, home values, incomes and other data.

    Isn't that all public information anyway? Incomes are public record. Home values are public record through county auditor's websites. That isn't much of a leak. More like footwork to gather it all together.

  • Governments do need their secrets, especially diplomatically. They also don't need as much secrecy as they claim. The point of whistle blowers is that they take action when they see the government doing wrong in secret. In modern times with computers there is just too much information for any one person to review and that is what Wikileaks was suppose to address. There was suppose to be conscientious people at the helm reviewing material before release so that people like Bradley Manning could entrust that

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      digression? You mean: discretion? Manning wasn't turned in by Wikileaks. The Wikileaks system allows for completely anonymous submissions.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Julian Assange didn't do anything to Bradley Manning.

      Bradley Manning contacted Adrian Lamo, spilled the beans on everything he was doing and Adrian Lamo narced him out to Army counter-intelligence and FBI.

      Wikileaks did everything they could for Manning's protection - Manning fucked himself over by trusting Adrian Lamo.

      Quit being stupid.

  • The smartest thing Leakers can do is study up on the ways to secure a genuinely anonymous communication link and then send such leaks to numerous leak receiving parties while perhaps additionally taking note of who does and does not process the leaks for verification and publishing. For certainly there are going to be, if not already (we actually already know "already" has happened) more falsely secure receiving sites. Sites that might be fun to expose.

    Simply put for leakers, don't trust any site to be secu

  • ...how is this any different than the various Warez/P2P networks out there? And why are they so hell bent on attaching themselves to something as legitimate as Wikileaks?

  • Anonymous Launches a WikiLeaks For Hackers

    Anonymous Launches Hackers For WikiLeaks

    WikiLeaks Launches Anonymous For Hackers

    WikiLeaks Launches Hackers For Anonymous

    Hackers Launch a WikiLeaks For Anonymous

    Hackers Launch Anonymous For WikiLeaks

  • Im surprised anyone is taking this site (that looks like it was developed by a 5 year old).... seriously. I certainly cant.

  • "If you've got a hack to submit, simply paste it into the "hacks_list" table on our MySQL server. Please refrain from changing the content of our home page though."

  • I thought that hackers already had their own Wikileaks and that it was called Pastebin.

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