WikiLeaks hit by week-long DDoS attack

WikiLeaks logo

/ WikiLeaks

(CBS/AP) WikiLeaks, a website that publishes classified documents from anonymous sources, says it's been the victim of a sustained denial-of-service attack which has left its website sluggish or inaccessible for more than a week.

U.K. police demand Julian Assange turn himself in
WikiLeaks: Julian Assange not leaving embassy
Full coverage of WikiLeaks

In a statement released late Saturday the group said the assault intensified around the beginning of August and has since expanded to include attacks against affiliated sites.

Denial-of-service attacks work by overwhelming websites with requests for information. WikiLeaks has said it's been flooded with 10 gigabits per second of bogus traffic from thousands of different Internet addresses.

Josh Corman, with online content delivery company Akamai, characterized that as "a bit larger" than attacks commonly seen in the past few years.

WikiLeaks was created by Julian Assange, who came under fire for heading the organization that leaked secret government documents. Assange also faces allegations of sex crimes in Sweden and is currently taking refuge in Ecuadorean embassy in London.

[mentsoyans]

Assange is a primadona. He wants attention. But, no one can deny, WikiLeaks is exposing corrupt governments. Take the oil-rich country of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva is very corrupt, and WikiLeaks has exposed her.

According to Mehriban Aliyeva's Wikipedia page, she and Finance Minister Samir Sharifov have a kickback scheme in place. Sharifov runs the government's finances, and Aliyeva's family has powerful hold on Azerbaijan big business. Sharifov and Aliyeva take money from programs for children and the poor. Mehriban Aliyeva is in Parliament, but she never attends and she does not know anything about the issues.

[antiforensics]

Trapwire infographic Data


In August 2012, Wikileaks revealed details about a system known as Trapwire that uses facial recognition and other techniques to track and monitor individuals captured on countless different closed-circuit cameras operated by cities and other insititutions. The software is billed as a method by which to prevent terrorism, but can of course also be used to provide unprecedented surveillance and data-mining capabilities to governments, corporations, and other insitutions, including many with a history of using new technologies to violate the rights of citizens. Trapwire is already used in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Texas, DC, London, and other locales.


The ex-CIA agents who help run the firm are old friends of Stratfor vice president Fred Burton, whom they've briefed on their own capabilities in e-mails obtained by Anonymous hackers and provided to Wikileaks. Stratfor has engaged in at least several surveillance operations against activists, such as those advocating for victims of the Bhopal disaster, on behalf of large U.S. corporatons; Burton himelf was revealed to have advocated "bankrupting" and "ruining the life" of activists like Julian Assange in e-mails to other friends.

Trapwire can be extremely expensive to maintain, and is usually done so at taxpayer expense; Los Angeles county spent over $1.4 million dollars on the software's use in a single three-month period of 2007.


Although most of the regions in which Trapwire operates don't share information with each other, all of this is set to change; as Abraxas Applications president Dan Botsch told Burton via e-mail, "I think over time the different networks will begin to unite," noting that several networks had already begun discussions on merging their information. Abraxas itself has always had the ability to "cross-network matches" from every region at their own office. By June 2011, Washington D.C. police were engaged in a pilot project under the Departent of Homeland Security that's likely to lead to more cities using Trapwire on a more integrated basis.


Abraxas, the firm whose spin-off Abraxas Applications developed Trapwire in 2007, has long been involved in a lesser-known practice known as persona management, which involves the use of fake online "people" to gather intelligence and/or disseminate disinformation. The firm Ntrepid, created by Abraxas owner Cubic Corporation, won a 2010 CENTCOM contract to provide such capabilities for use in foreign countries; several board members of Ntrepid also sit on Abraxas.


Further reading:

http://publicintelligence.net/unravelling-trapwire/

http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Cubic_Corporation#Abraxas.2FAnonymizer

[Jkindle1]

A group calling themselves "AntiLeaks" is widely believed to be behind these attacks, as reported in RussiaToday, TheRegister, etc etc

[antiforensics]

Trapwire infographic Data


In August 2012, Wikileaks revealed details about a system known as Trapwire that uses facial recognition and other techniques to track and monitor individuals captured on countless different closed-circuit cameras operated by cities and other insititutions. The software is billed as a method by which to prevent terrorism, but can of course also be used to provide unprecedented surveillance and data-mining capabilities to governments, corporations, and other insitutions, including many with a history of using new technologies to violate the rights of citizens. Trapwire is already used in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Texas, DC, London, and other locales.


The ex-CIA agents who help run the firm are old friends of Stratfor vice president Fred Burton, whom they've briefed on their own capabilities in e-mails obtained by Anonymous hackers and provided to Wikileaks. Stratfor has engaged in at least several surveillance operations against activists, such as those advocating for victims of the Bhopal disaster, on behalf of large U.S. corporatons; Burton himelf was revealed to have advocated "bankrupting" and "ruining the life" of activists like Julian Assange in e-mails to other friends.

Trapwire can be extremely expensive to maintain, and is usually done so at taxpayer expense; Los Angeles county spent over $1.4 million dollars on the software's use in a single three-month period of 2007.


Although most of the regions in which Trapwire operates don't share information with each other, all of this is set to change; as Abraxas Applications president Dan Botsch told Burton via e-mail, "I think over time the different networks will begin to unite," noting that several networks had already begun discussions on merging their information. Abraxas itself has always had the ability to "cross-network matches" from every region at their own office. By June 2011, Washington D.C. police were engaged in a pilot project under the Departent of Homeland Security that's likely to lead to more cities using Trapwire on a more integrated basis.


Abraxas, the firm whose spin-off Abraxas Applications developed Trapwire in 2007, has long been involved in a lesser-known practice known as persona management, which involves the use of fake online "people" to gather intelligence and/or disseminate disinformation. The firm Ntrepid, created by Abraxas owner Cubic Corporation, won a 2010 CENTCOM contract to provide such capabilities for use in foreign countries; several board members of Ntrepid also sit on Abraxas.


Further reading:

http://publicintelligence.net/unravelling-trapwire/

http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Cubic_Corporation#Abraxas.2FAnonymizer