WikiLeaks to Release 400,000 Secret Documents Monday

[seemslikeadream]

WikiLeaks to Release 400,000 Secret Documents as Funding Concerns Loom


Wikileaks is expected to release over 400,000 sensitive documents on Monday in what will be the largest intelligence leak since the Afghan War reports.

The Pentagon is bracing itself for the potential fallout of the release of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the Iraq War. According to multiple reports, the Pentagon has been sifting through the database where the documents originated. A Pentagon spokesperson said that it set up a 120-person task force several weeks ago to determine the potential implications and damage of the military reports being leaked.

The documents are expected to be released simultaneously by The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel, the same three media organizations that worked with WikiLeaks on the Afghan War Diary in July. Those 90,000 logs detailed information on Taliban attacks, civilian deaths, NATO strategy, involvement by Pakistan in the insurgency and more.

The leak brought unprecedented media attention for the whistleblower organization. It also resulted in widespread controversy, both in political chambers and in media circles. The Pentagon even threatened action if WikiLeaks “didn’t do the right thing” and return the stolen documents.

Recently though, the controversy surrounding WikiLeaks has risen to dramatic heights. Founder Julian Assange was accused of rape, and although those charges have been dropped, his handling of the situation has led to internal strife at the organization, enough so that one of its spokespeople resigned in protest.

That’s not all, either; Wikileaks claims that its funding has been blocked because it has been placed on watchlists for both the U.S. and Australian governments. It can no longer accept donations through Moneybookers, the site that collected the organization’s donations. PayPal suspended Wikileaks’ account earlier this year.

Will next week’s Iraq War documents help get WikiLeaks back on track, or will the controversy surround the organization only grow? What kind of impact will the reports have on the Iraq War, world politics and WikiLeaks itself? We’re going to soon find out.

[KeenInsight]

F*** the Pentagon. What are they so afraid of? We already know 'that' war was a waste of human life... oh and a lie.

[wintler2]

Bump.


Pentagon: 'nobody harmed by Wikileaks leaks' (or from August)

New Statesman & Pilger rate Assenge as #23 of People Who Matter

WikiLeaks editor named UNTE Reader visionary

[beeline]

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/wikileaks-says-it-is-blacklisted

WikiLeaks Says It Is Blacklisted Online

An e-commerce website says Wikileaks has been blacklisted in the United States and Australia so it can't receive donations.

E-commerce firm Moneybookers.com, which had been handling online donations to Wikileaks, wrote an e-mail to the website saying its account had been closed because of the blacklisting. Wikileaks made the e-mail public over the weekend.

U.S. and Australian officials said Monday they hadn't banned businesses from dealing with WikiLeaks. It is possible, however, that firms that assess clients for banks have advised them that dealing with Wikileaks is potentially risky.

The allegations came as Swedish authorities rejected WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange's request for residency, a potential setback to his effort to win protection of the country's media freedom laws.

[Montag]

Pentagon asks media not to publish war leaks
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... 0e96b65bc3

excerpt:

The Pentagon on Monday asked media organizations not to publish any classified war files released by the WikiLeaks Web site, as the U.S. braces for the potential disclosure of hundreds of thousands of secret Iraq war documents.

In July, WikiLeaks obtained and released nearly 77,000 classified military reports from Afghanistan. Now, the Pentagon says the group has as many as 400,000 documents from a military database on operations in Iraq.

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange on Monday downplayed expectations that a leak was imminent. In a Twitter post, Assange said information were coming from "a single tabloid blog" that had put out a "tremendous amount" of false information about his site.

Still, the military says its 120-person task force has been on high alert. The group has been reviewing the documents for weeks to determine what information might be compromised.

Marine Corps Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that the military isn't sure if WikiLeaks has shared the Iraq war logs with any news organizations. But, he said, media should not disseminate the "stolen" information even if it's already posted online by WikiLeaks.

"The concern is that WikiLeaks as an organization should not be made more credible by having credible news organizations facilitate what they're doing," Lapan said.

WikiLeaks was largely unknown until this spring, when it released a gritty war video of Army helicopters gunning down a group of men — including two unarmed Reuters photographers — in Iraq.

The group in July gained international notoriety when it coordinated its release of the 77,000 Afghan war logs with The New York Times, The Guardian in London and the German magazine Der Spiegel.

The New York Times says it omitted information from its coverage that would have jeopardized military operations or exposed Afghan informants. The Times also declined to provide a Web link to the WikiLeaks data base.

Der Spiegel and The Guardian said it withheld sensitive information as well, although The Guardian published a selection of the documents that it believed were significant.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has told Congress that the July leak did not expose the nation's most sensitive intelligence secrets. But, he maintained, the release still put U.S. interests at risk because it exposed the names of some Afghans who had cooperated with U.S. forces.

[justdrew]

so - anyone seen any sign of this yet?

[justdrew]

from Al-Jiz...

well. this is an "odd" development. why didn't they/he deny it over the weekend?

Whistleblowing website dismisses talk of imminent release of 400,000 classified US military documents on Iraq war.

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has denied reports that his website is about to leak a huge number of US documents on Iraq.

Assange also said that the whistle-blowing organisation, which leaked massive amounts of official documents on the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan, had its funding cut off.

He accused the US government of "financial warfare" against the website and said that the company that handles many of its donations had stopped the money flow.

The Pentagon denied that it was involved in the financial cut off, but said it was bracing itself for the publication of hundreds of thousands of documents on the site.

It said WikiLeaks had as many as 400,000 documents from a military database on US operations in Iraq, and asked news organisations not to publish them.

Assange, however, downplayed expectations of such a leak.

In a Twitter post, he said information was coming from "a single tabloid blog" that had put out a "tremendous amount'' of false information about his site.

[Simulist]

But the message that was intended to get through all along got through, of course, after all: "Uh-mer'cans are still free! 'Cause Look! Whole butt-loads of 'classified' documents 'the gubmint' didn't want released got released once anyhow! God bless Uh-mer'cah."

("Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose.")

[anothershamus]

this just came out, I haven't downloaded it yet:

Now is a good time to mirror this WikiLeaks 'insurance' backup

http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/27854791764

[anothershamus]

This just in:

WikiLeaks communications infrastructure is currently under attack. Project BO move to coms channel S. Activate Reston5.

I don't know what it means. "These aren't the leaks you're looking for,.... Move along, Move along"

Then there was that thing about the Wired editor being a shill for the CIA, and feuding with Julius Assange.
I heard it on the radio and I haven't looked for a link.

[elfismiles]

WikiLeaks to hold major news conference‎
WireUpdate - 9 hours ago
By BNO News BRUSSELS (BNO NEWS) -- Whistle-blowing organization WikiLeaks on Thursday announced that it will soon hold a press conference in Europe, ...
http://wireupdate.com/wires/11504/wikil ... onference/

Wikileaks Panel to Open Day Two of Online News Association ...‎
Marketwire (press release) - 3 days ago
The sold-out 2010 Online News Association Conference and Awards Banquet, Oct. 28-30, ... The Wikileaks panel will take the stage on Saturday, Oct. 30. ...
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release ... 336660.htm

[anothershamus]

Looks like the release will be tomorrow.
New wikileaks twitters, from here: http://twitter.com/wikileaks

# The War on WikiLeaks | Harvard/Nieman http://bit.ly/aJCxL5 less than 10 seconds ago via web

# Daniel Ellsberg on WikiLeaks (new) http://youtube.com/watch?v=z1pTl8KdREk http://youtube.com/watch?v=z1pTl8KdREk 16 minutes ago via web

# Major WikiLeaks announcement in Europe at 10am tomorrow. LAST CHANCE to book [press only] email sunshine.booking@mail.be about 1 hour ago via web

# Major WikiLeaks press conference in europe coming up; to book [press/NGO only], mail sunshine.booking@mail.be 4:07 AM Oct 21st via web

[seemslikeadream]

Looks like the release will be tomorrow.
New wikileaks twitters, from here: http://twitter.com/wikileaks

# The War on WikiLeaks | Harvard/Nieman http://bit.ly/aJCxL5 less than 10 seconds ago via web

# Daniel Ellsberg on WikiLeaks (new) http://youtube.com/watch?v=z1pTl8KdREk http://youtube.com/watch?v=z1pTl8KdREk 16 minutes ago via web

# Major WikiLeaks announcement in Europe at 10am tomorrow. LAST CHANCE to book [press only] email sunshine.booking@mail.be about 1 hour ago via web

# Major WikiLeaks press conference in europe coming up; to book [press/NGO only], mail sunshine.booking@mail.be 4:07 AM Oct 21st via web

THANK YOU anothershamus

[elfismiles]

Wikileaks: Secret Iraq War Death Toll Set at 285,000 (VIDEO)
WikiLeaks Dumps 400,000 Classified Military Documents.
26 comments By RUSSELL GOLDMAN and LUIS MARTINEZ
Oct. 22, 2010

In what is being described as the largest release of secret U.S. military documents ever, whistle-blowing web site WikiLeaks has released a trove of classified reports about the war in Iraq, including a secret U.S. government tally that put the Iraqi death toll at 285,000, according to news sources that received advanced copies of the documents.

The documents include evidence of state sanctioned torture by the Iraqi government, new evidence of Iraqi government death squads, and Iran's involvement in funneling arms to Shiite militias, according to Arab news channel Al Jazeera, which has been able to review the documents before their release.

Al Jazeera has reviewed the 400,000 documents that are being released. WikiLeaks says it will hold a press conference Saturday morning in Europe. WikiLeaks' Web site is currently down, for what it calls "scheduled maintenance," and ABC News has not viewed the documents firsthand.

Among the highlights initially released by al Jazeera are claims that the death toll reached 185,000, and that 63 percent of them were civilians. The U.S. military has long maintained that it does not keep an official death toll.

The Arabic news outlet also claims the documents state that 681 Iraqi civilians were killed at U.S. checkpoints, 180,000 Iraqis were arrested during the war, and that 15,000 Iraqis were buried without being identified.

The massive leak was anticipated by the Pentagon, which has warned that publicizing the information could endanger U.S. troops.

"We strongly condemn the unauthorized disclosure of classified information," said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell, prior to the documents becoming public.

Morrell said the documents "expose secret information that could make our troops even more vulnerable to attack in the future. Just as with the leaked Afghan documents, we know our enemies will mine this information looking for insights into how we operate, cultivate sources, and react in combat situations, even the capability of our equipment. This security breach could very well get our troops and those they are fighting with killed."

Sources that have seen the documents report no major revelations, but taken together can be read as a secret history of the war written from a troop's eye view of the conflict.

The Pentagon has said the documents include tactical reports from late 2003 to 2010 containing brief unit-level observations of what those units saw on a daily basis.

They include descriptions of attacks on Iraqi Security Forces and US forces, detainee abuse, civilian casualty incidents, IED blasts, discussions with Iraqis, and inquiries into socio-political relations, according to Department of Defense spokesman Col. David Lapan

The release of the documents comes at a critical time as U.S. troops begin a staged withdrawal from Iraq. All 50,000 remaining US troops in the country are expected to leave by the end of next year.

As occurred with the Afghanistan documents, the Iraqi war documents would likely contain the names of Iraqis who cooperated with U.S. Forces.

In July, WikiLeaks published a raft of secret documents from Afghanistan, which the Website obtained from a single rogue soldier, Army Specialist Bradley Manning, who had access to secret intelligence contained on military computers.

Among the documents Manning leaked, was a classified video showing an Apache helicopter attack in 2007 that killed civilians and two Reuters news photographers. Manning is currently in a military brig near Washington DC awaiting a court martial.

As occurred with the Afghanistan documents, the Iraqi war documents would likely contain the names of Iraqis who cooperated with U.S. Forces.

The Pentagon has continued to express concerns about Wiki Leaks releasing unredacted information containing such names because of the potential harm they might face by insurgents. "Our concern is mostly with the threat to individuals, the threat to our people and our equipment," said Lapan.

After WikiLeaks released 70,000 documents in July relating to the war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon quickly set up a 120 person task force to review the documents for potential damage. Lapan has said that in anticipation of a release of Iraq War documents, that same task force has spent the past few weeks reviewing a database of 400,000 "significant acts" from the war in Iraq.

Lapan said the task force looked for names of Iraqi individuals that might be included in the documents and passed this information to US Central Command Centcom, which presumably would pass them on to US Forces-Iraq.

Despite the military's concerns that individuals would be threatened following the publication of the Afghan documents in July, the Pentagon said no such cases had been recorded.

"I don't have any information that from the first 77,000 documents that any individuals were killed. But then again I don't think we have perfect knowledge either," Lapan said.

The investigation into the leaked Afghan war documents has focused on, who worked as an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq. He is now under military detention in the Washington DC area under charges that he a classified video showing an Apache helicopter attack in 2007 that killed civilians and two Reuters news photographers.

"We deplore WikiLeaks for inducing individuals to break the law, leak classified documents and then cavalierly share that secret information with the world, including our enemies. We know terrorist organizations have been mining the leaked Afghan documents for information to use against us and this Iraq leak is more than four times as large. By disclosing such sensitive information, WikiLeaks continues to put at risk the lives of our troops, their coalition partners and those Iraqis and Afghans working with us. The only responsible course of action for WikiLeaks at this point is to return the stolen material and expunge it from their websites as soon as possible. "


http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wikleaks ... d=11949670

[elfismiles]

22 October 2010. Hackers working for the Feds fits Wired's promoting snitches in its work for the Feds.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cryptome Hackers May Be Feds - Wikileaks a Target Too
A sends:

I got curious and there IS a link on the Encyclopedia Dramatica Xyrix article to the 4chan raid of December, 2007, under Blow_Jays.

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Blow_jays

Xyrix and the others issued a New 4chan manifesto as if it were coup d'etat, pretty funny, but they couldn't deal with the bandwidth after they hijacked the site for more than a few minutes (they were trying to host and run the imageboard on their own or other hijacked equipment, pretending they had permanently stolen it).

The interesting part is this girl Angyl elected to call m00t to demand ransom in exchange for turning the site back over to him. m00t is the owner of 4chan. There is an audio clip as well as a transcript at the above link, the audio is still available on the MIRROR link from rapidshare:

http://rapidshare.com/files/76551329/mo ... d.mp3.html

(if it saves as a 7 MB html file, just change the html extension to MP3 manually)

She says clearly that 4chan had its "open DNS jacked"... more DNS stuff from these people.

Angyl fell out with Xyrix a bit later. It might be worth noting she joined the g00nz group, and that their IRC began hosting the Anonymous attacks on Scientology, and further that some people associated with g00nz began a backraid against the 4chan raid on Scientology, including a character named Nemesis [or similar] who later shacked up with Angyl. Allegedly Scientology also hired a Romanian hack group called Reliant or Revelant or Relevant or something like that to run a real backraid on the 4chan raid. The g00nies distanced themselves from the attack on 4chan and embraced the Scientology offensive publicly, but in the background there were people working the other side, logging chat, taking down names, the whole gamut. g00nz rid themselves of the Scientology activists after a while by claiming to go on vacation for a few months and shutting off the IRC. Maybe they were in some danger of the "Party Van" (feds) coming down on them, idk. Whatever the case, the g00nz's style is completely different than Xyrix's, like night and day.

Another little thing: Xyrix and his group seem to have a penchant for iconoclastically attacking underground/counterculture sites. He mentions TPB in one of his missives on the 4chan attack available at the first link provided above. When they defaced Cryptmoe, they put "<3 Bradley Manning" and their bragging makes a big deal of the spurious Wikileaks Insider emails. In other words, the drang nach osten seems to target Sweden as the first theater of battle then and now, 2007 and 2010. Or maybe they were just reading Wired and thought they found something big and SEKRIT in the Wikileaks Insider emails. You have to wonder though when the same people keep targeting the same targets the Man wants targeted, while claiming to be doing it for kicks, "for the lulz," or a la Sir Edmund "Because it's there."

It would also be surprising if Xyrix didn't have or claim to have some minor Mafia connections, or to be available for hire, in which case it doesn't matter if he knows he's working for the Feds or not, it's easy enough to run something like that a few steps removed. I wouldn't get too paranoid about it yet, though, it's probably just stupid fat kids from Jersey doing what stupid fat kids from Jersey do, or following some path laid out for them to attack TPB and Wikileaks, for whatever personal motivations. I assume they were more interested in attacking WL than Cryptome because of the publicity.

Just thinking out loud.

__________

A sends:

I read all that. The Dec 14 2007 (?) 4chan "pwnage" will be documented somewhere. It happened around the time Operation CoSplay began, to DDOS Church of Scientology webpage, operational name later changed to something or other. EncyclopediaDramatica sometimes has stuff like a minor 4chan outage still online. Xyrix has his own personal ED page, apparently, it might be linked there. It sounds like he got in as an admin or something and locked people out, but I don't recall the event specifically.

Attached for possible separate perusal is what I laughingly called the 4chan In Real Life Lawful Spying Guide. My what a tangled web. Use it if you can make sense of it! It's not relevant to your hacker problem afaik.

http://cryptome.org/0002/cryptome-hack6 ... -guide.rar (Not examined by Cryptome.)

__________

> Thanks very much, this info could be very useful.
>
> Several of the alleged Cryptome hackers have been accused of
> hacking 4chan. This has been discussed on yayo.org forum (now
> down but available in Google cache - search "site:yayo.org Xyrix 4chan.")
>
> http://bit.ly/dneYE6
>
> Also discussion on DigitalGangster.com, search on
> "site:digitalgangster.com Xyrix."
>
> http://bit.ly/bSL4tv
>
> Regards,
>
> John

__________

A sends:

Hadn't checked cryptome for a few weeks, saw the hack attack news item. This is strange but I think I recognize the IP:

Corey Barnhill
541 Hamilton St Apt A
Harrison, NJ 07029
IP Address: 76.124.84.68. Host name: c-76-124-84-68.hsd1.nj.comcast.net

There's been sort of a conflict for the past few weeks, documented on torrentfreak.com and tieve.tk

Some firm in the UK hired some hackers in India to attack thepiratebay.org and some people on boards.4chan.org/b organized a counter-response, took down the Indian "call center" and the UK lawyer, and thought it such fun that they're still at it.

Last I saw they were ddosing www.ipo.gov.uk and genesimmons.com

While this has been going on, tpb and demonoid have gone down at least once apiece. tpb claimed routine maintenance.

The 4chan group, Operation Payback is a Bitch, have had their IRC channels targetted and shut down several times, most recently by a C&D letter from some org in the UK.

The kryogenicks people in their correspondence to you are TRYING HARD to claim a 4chan association, that's what the BACKTRACE stuff is all about. "Consequences will never be the same" came out of an outraged father whose daughter fell in with the wrong crowd and had her facebook etc raided. He shouted at the webcam, uttering inanites like "YOU HAVE BEEN BACKTRACED BY THE FBI!" It made the 4channers giggle with delight.

Now, kryogenicks claiming 4chan affiliation is all wrong, on a raid 4channers deny any connection, or claim "eBaumsWorld did it." And yes, the 4chan anons attacked Church of Scientology for over a year.

I think you got some blowback from one of the hacker groups working for the Man to fight torrenters and their supporters.

I recognize the IP pasted in above:

For several days this IP (I'm fairly sure anyway) in concert with a comcast.net address in CA and MO (and perhaps a pool.fios.verizon agent) were blocking the seeding of a demonoid torrent, something silly, a week's worth of Coast to Coast AM audio MP3s. The way they did it was to open and close connections to a seeder in rapid succession and in multiple instances, then do the handshake stuff and close, reopen, etc etc. It used up all the bandwidth and was rapidfire. They tried to make direct p2p connections via the tracker, rather than uTP peer connect. Once they had the client seemingly in their grasp, they'd spoof the router address and start sending requests to the router, so 127.0.0.1: with a series of ports tried in sequence from zero to 655000 or whatever the maximum is. Sniffing to create a botnet via the Coast audience?

I could be completely wrong that this IP is the same as the one you encountered, but I'm still blocking ALL comcast addresses because of it, it was very annoying.

One other thing, one of the sites Operation PBIAB targetted was a live music franchise in the UK, and that or a lawyer (I forget which) began SPOOFING THE DEFAULT ROUTER ADDRESS as a regular DNS internet address too, 127.0.0.1, so the payers back were supposed to DDOS their modems, but people caught on quickly and stopped.

I think your deface/breach was related to the prof hackers hired to take down the TPB, in terms of a general trend, but not the same exact guys.



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Previous:
cryptome-hack5.htm "Xyrix" "Virus" "Null" "Trainreq" Linked October 17, 2010
thug-mugshots.htm "Xyrix" "Virus" "Null" Hacker-Thug Mug Shots October 14, 2010
cryptome-offer.htm Cryptome Offer to Hackers and Wired October 11, 2010
cryptome-nobreach.htm Cryptome Not "Breached" October 11, 2010
perras-hacknot.htm "Justin Perras" Disavows Cryptome Hack Update October 10, 2010
cryptome-hack4.htm Cryptome Hackers and Consequences Update October 9, 2010
cryptome-hack3.htm Cryptome Hack 3 Updated October 8, 2010
wired-crime.htm Wired Complicit in Federal Crimes by Hacker October 5, 2010

http://cryptome.org/0002/cryptome-hack6 ... -hack6.htm