WikiLeaks Under Denial of Service Attack 870
wiredmikey writes "WikiLeaks has reported that its Web site is currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack. The attack comes around the time of an expected release of classified State Department documents, which the Obama administration says will put 'countless' lives at risk, threaten global counterterrorism operations and jeopardize US relations with its allies."
Secrecy (Score:5, Interesting)
"lives at risk" "threaten global counterterrorism operations" and "jeopardize us relations" all sounds like politicianese for "we really fucked up and don't want anybody to know about it"
Whatever happened to justice against people who commit (war) crimes?
NID / NWO others (Score:1, Interesting)
NID / NWO others
Funny stuff. (Score:4, Interesting)
"and jeopardize US relations with its allies"
Wiki leaks is just releasing information.. sounds like to me they're doing things the other countries wouldn't approve of; thus ruining relations. So they don't want anyone to know about what they ( the U.S. ) does in secret.. BUT If someone is willing to expose such information, they blame it on the site. lol~
It's like a kid stealing from a store and his brother that was with him tells on him, then the kid who stole blames it on his brother for telling everyone what he did. /laugh
Re:attacked by whom? (Score:1, Interesting)
by hackers who value the free world and are against biased thiefs.
wikileaks mainly publishes leaks of government info of US... how come they don't publish stuff which embarasses india? every day there's corruption being reported in the news in india... but wikileaks covers none of it?
Dear every politician on earth (Score:4, Interesting)
Drop the fucking paranoia. It's old. It's boring. It's see through. Stuff like this:
the Obama administration says will put 'countless' lives at risk, threaten global counterterrorism operations and jeopardize US relations with its allies
doesn't win sympathy. It merely shows your inability to come up with relevant points to put in a press release. Who on earth do you think believes it?
Sorry for rant but I've seen this from US politicians, from UK politicians and from European politicians; I'm sick of this crap.
Re:These documents should not be released. (Score:1, Interesting)
Give a specific example. If the truth is damaging to the US and/or "its allies" how is that anyone's fault but their own? At what point did it become wrong to show someone in a bad light when it's all true?
I can support Wikileaks (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The leaks are not the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly this.
The policies themselves are the dangers to human lives. Wikileaks exists to make sure this stuff gets out while the responsible parties can still be held accountable.
Re:I can support Wikileaks (Score:3, Interesting)
However I draw the line at releasing documents that are the politicians equivalent of a drunken conversation at a frat party.
If I understand frat parties correctly, the conversations aren't usually acted on the next day. Can't say the same for this stuff. There's a couple of interesting bits in there but there's also a lot of stuff everyone already knew; US arming Isreal - no shit Sherlock. I'm waiting for the editing and summaries right now.
"Expected" Release ? (Score:5, Interesting)
i even submitted its article on wikileaks site. All the info regarding the US Afghan war logs were up in a SEARCHABLE and browseable directory. (A good implementation i might add).
Yet, the news of the release, by me or by any other submitter, were not published in slashdot, but, the ddos for the 'release' that was 'anticipated' has been.
The train has long left the station.
no (Score:3, Interesting)
ddosing RIGHT at the time news is fresh, would eliminate a lot of casual readers interested in the material only temporarily.
What 'secret' means to the State Dept (Score:5, Interesting)
When the US State Department classifies a cable as secret, it's usually because of some situation that will embarrass the pants off of someone there.
Let' look at a typical situation that results in a 'classified secret' set of missives:
The US undersecretary of African Affairs refers to the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of the People's Democratic Republic of Bongo as a 'retarded monkey' because he stole half of the $150 million NGO grant for an egg farm and deposited it directly into his Swiss bank account without first wiring it through the Cayman Islands like the undersecretary told him to do. Now the transaction is transparent and the undersecretary won't get his $155,000 consultancy fee from the hedge fund firm that his Yale frat brother runs down there that was supposed to handle the transaction in the first place.
The situation is compounded by the fact that the US undersecretary and the Bongoian Deputy Minister are sharing a mistress who is a top fashion model. The undersecretary made the remark about the DM to his mistress in bed and she texted it to her sister in Paris. The communication was intercepted by the NSA/CIA and put into an official memo to the State Department. Now the DM will be pissed as hell and will make all sorts of accusations of 'USA imperialism' and 'racist corporate profiteering' at the United Nations. The undersecretary will have to buy the DM a new Mercedes to cool him down and get passed over for promotion until a new Secretary of the State Dept is appointed after the next election.
The only person who might be killed is the mistress/fashion model if she makes the mistake of going back to Bongo before the Deputy Minister gets his new Mercedes. Even then, she better allow the DM to indulge his special inclinations lest she find herself floating down the Bongo river, trying to catch up with her head.
-------- This is how diplomacy works and why all these cables have to be kept secret. Let's hope that the WikiLeaks people had the sense to make multiple copies and distributing them widely before announcing that they were going to post all this stuff!
Attack? Why not just curious people? (Score:2, Interesting)
If you announce some scandalous documents are going to be posted on your website and the news is broadcasting to the world that these documents are going to be posted on your website why oh why would you think that when you suddenly get clobbered with web traffic that you think someone has launched a distributed denial of service against your little web server?
Why couldn't it be people all trying to get to your website to see if those scandalous documents have been posted yet?
It's like K-Mart advertising extra-low price special deals in newspapers and TV that will be in effect the day after Thanksgiving and then get all pouty when a crowd of people, OBVIOUSLY sent by the competition, show up before the stores open to block your front doors and preventing people from shopping at your stores.
Idiots.
Re:Administration has zero credibility (Score:5, Interesting)
how do you know lives haven't been put at risk? Are you privy to the vast intelligence network of people who keep you safe everyday?
Not a clue, although our government has said no lives were put at risk by the prior leak. On the other hand, with the leak of Valerie Plame's name everyone we ever shared a meal with her or washed her car was suddenly suspected of being complicit in espionage.
Re:Administration has zero credibility (Score:2, Interesting)
We should really be asking ourselves WHY THE FUCK CAN'T THE GOVERNMENT KEEP THE NAMES OF CIVILIAN INFORMANTS CONFIDENTIAL?!
Re:The leaks are not the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Listen to yourself. You don't understand your own metaphor. The reason why it's called "dirty laundry" is because it's unsavory but nevertheless unavoidable - we all have it and do our best to conceal it from company.
All facets of life involve keeping secrets. You don't want your doctor telling your friends or your employer nd family about your STDs. You don't want your shrink telling your parents all those dreams you had about killing them. You don't want your best friend telling your girlfriend about that time you cheated on her. You don't want your boss to know that you're looking around for a better job. You don't want Nigerians knowing your Social Security number and mother's maiden name. You don't want your prospective employer to know that you narrowly escaped jail time back in college. You don't want your buddies to know about that weird fling you had in Amsterdam. Etc.
Governments work the same way. They don't need ally A to know about the deal they're making with ally B. They don't need Ally B to know up front exactly how much they're willing to negotiate. They don't need their enemies to know about troop movements, or shift changes or the secret rescue that is still in the planning stages or the embargoed technology they're trying to acquire. There are a lot of things, some not even bad, that require secrecy to work.
What Assange is doing is a kind of guerrilla warfare. Unfortunately the end result of his efforts will not be liberation for anybody but less freedom, less trust and less safety in the world. And not just for Americans.
Re:These documents should not be released. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm wagering that there's more than that in there. I'm wondering, on the smaller scale, how you would feel if everything you said about your wife in private were to be dropped on her lap. That's one form of damage from these releases.
Re:Oh please. (Score:3, Interesting)
Aside from the Arabs pressing for the attack of Iran, nothing there was of any news to me.
That's only news to people who don't understand that Iranians aren't Arabs, and don't understand that Iran is the only real threat to Saudi Arabia and Israel as regional powers. (In other words 75% of the US population.) Israel and the Saudis have nothing to lose from a US war with Iran and a lot to gain (money, expansion of their influence). The US wouldn't be able to win full on conventional war with Iran at this point. And the Iranians know it, hence their attitude on uranium enrichment.
Re:These documents should not be released. (Score:3, Interesting)
If I may elaborate, I believe that this leak is morally wrong if it includes future plans and strategies that could be implemented in various situations, but the parts that are of past affairs should be known so that people can be held responsible for their mistakes.
Re:Secrecy (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. I remember that part of the brainwashing i got as a child was to describe how the USSR treated its prisoners using sleep deprivation, secret hidden prisons, etc. It readily dehumanized them to me as a young child. Now our own government readily admits (proudly at times) to doing worse. I can't help but fail to be proud of my country any more. Our leaders are no better than the soviet scum I was raised to hate, except their now us.
Re:I can support Wikileaks (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep. This is pure gossip. Interesting to listen or read through, for sure, but what good is coming out of it?
It's like finding your boss's computer unlocked and sifting through his emails. Interesting stuff to be found, for sure, but releasing it isn't whistle blowing.
Re:Administration has zero credibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually these latest leaks make me suspicious that the whole thing was leaked on purpose. Iraq and Afghanistan leaks, for all the screaming and hollering of the anti-war crowd, actually don't contain any damning evidence of war crimes. Even books like Generation Kill contain more information about civilian deaths and that was published years ago and made into a frigging mini series and nobody cares. The most embarrassing thing for the US government is that it allowed the leaks to take place, but they can live with that. Look at the latest leaks though:
North Korea supplies Iran with long range missiles
Arabs, including Saudis, Jordan, Bahrain and UAE urge US to bomb Iran
Pakistan is refusing US efforts to remove dangerous fissile material that could fall into terrorist hands
... so far strengthening the case for attack on Iran, which I think is the main intention, then, just for good measure....
Confirmation that Chinese government spies on Google
Gaddafi is corrupt
Putin is not as tough as he present himself, Medvedev is to him like Robin to Batman...
Ahmedinejad is refrred to as Hitler, Kim Jong Il as impaired from a stroke...
Nothing particularly embarrassing to the US, but a lot that is embarrassing to others
The documents are out. NYT summary (Score:5, Interesting)
The document are out, and The New York Times is already reporting on the good stuff. [nytimes.com]
One of the more embarrassing items is this: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official "that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S."
Re:Administration has zero credibility (Score:1, Interesting)
A thorough Department of Defense analysis concluded -- Wikileaks released no sensitive source information, and to date no Afghans have been harmed or threatened from it.
That's what a government source said, so how do you know it's not another lie? Isn't it possible that they are covering up that Afghans have been murdered? I mean if US informants are murdered due to an information leak that could dissuade others from working for the US.
Re:moron. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, to be fair, just because someone advocates starting a war does not mean that war will actually be started.
your approach is too shallow. these are not ordinary trolls talking and raving on the internet. these are actual countries, which have various departments, including intelligence agencies which may act in direction of the desire of their government.
you cant imagine that, all the government of a country wont be working to that end, when the government wants war.
Re:Administration has zero credibility (Score:3, Interesting)
It was confidential, dumb ass. It was on a private network. Do you speak in "code" when privately talking with your friends about things that you'd like to keep private? If you have a reasonable expectation if privacy, you don't.
Re:Administration has zero credibility (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with most of your statement, but I dont believe the choice you put in there is really all that spectacular.
What about wind turbines/water turbines/solar?
Dams have issues as well, so lets not talk about that.
Harness what Nature gives us, not destroy it.
Re:Just read through the Guardian story (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Administration has zero credibility (Score:5, Interesting)
The last leak contained the needed evidence. It assumed the new will also reveal more, but nothing on this has been reported yet.
Also, please remember the war crime commited by Danish and British soldiers is primarily: Handing over prisoners to foreign states that engage in the use of torture. Where the foreign state in question is the United States of America.
Let me repeat that: It is now considered a war crime to hand over enemies of the US to the US, because of the way the US treats them.
Re:These documents should not be released. (Score:5, Interesting)
And soldiers who kill civilians should be put on trial for war crimes. Why do they get an automatic pass, and a person who reveals their actions should go to jail?
Re:Administration has zero credibility (Score:3, Interesting)
nuclear plants don't make plutonium. a vanishingly small number of reactor types can make useful (for weapons) plutonium, but those tend to be not so efficient for generating power.
most of the dangerous reactor designs of the past have been designed deliberately to avoid making anything useful. that's the main reason there's so much waste. it was the safest, most efficient design possible with crippling regulations in mind. re-evaluating those regulations with modern designs in mind is essential for nuclear to become safer and far more efficient (think 98% less waste, and what's left is short-lived rather than long-lived fission products).
What is this supposed to accomplish? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm assuming that this DoS can't continue indefinitely, so whatever is being covered up will be revealed as soon as the attack ends, right?
Re:attacked by whom? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you're quite right but I honestly believe that Wikileaks (or at least Assange) has some leftish anti-American bias. I think they probably would release documents from $COUNTRY if they could, but they seem to focus more on the USA.
I'm not American but this latest release seems to have very little of actual substance. Comments on this leader or that leader are not actually directly useful to the public; it is not of direct concern to me what diplomat X thinks of leader Y in country Z. It is more geopolitically interesting that Arab leaders are urging strikes on Iran, but again I'm unsure of the importance of that information to the public.
Every country would say unflattering things sometimes, just as in a workplace one must sometimes frankly discuss the strengths and weaknesses of colleagues. But sending transcripts of such frank discussions to a company-wide mailing list wouldn't be appropriate, and it feels as if that's what Wikileaks has done: send lots of unflattering info to everyone without it actually benefiting them or the people discussed.
Re:Just read through the Guardian story (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe not so distributed. (Score:2, Interesting)
This may have been a Slowloris [ckers.org] DoS attack by some patriotic 2600 guy [twitter.com], not necessarily a massive coordinated multinational assault. That perl script is effective on threading web servers including Apache. I just tested it out, took down my badass 100mbps server (just the web server stalling up until the script is aborted) with a dinky server on a DSL line just by opening up a bunch of TCP sockets really really slowly, using less than 20KB/s. That's Tor friendly.
Then I installed mod_qos, tried to attack myself again, no slowdown, problem solved.
If this attack gets the right amount of attention it could turn a lot of people on (4channers mainly who are yapping up Slowlaris as their replacement for LOIC) to DoSing with this software. So for those of you using Apache, you may want to fire up mod_qos [sourceforge.net] (Apache2 instructions [r00tsecurity.org]). Actually you may want it regardless for general performance purposes.
Re:These documents should not be released. (Score:5, Interesting)
If that's true then I'd love to see an example of how the U.S. government is fulfilling its responsibilities.
Some guy gets on a plane with a bomb strapped to his body and we only find out about it when he detonates it, injuring no one but himself. Result? The U.S. government takes away more of our privacy and dignity and arguably withdraws freedoms from every citizen, in order to make the claim that it is stopping attacks on U.S. citizens.
Meanwhile, somewhere at an ATM in Oakland, California, a man is hit on the head with an aluminum baseball bat and two young men walk away with his money, ID, and cell phone. The man later dies of complications due to skull fracture. Where was the U.S. government?
Re:I can support Wikileaks (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't draw the line at exposing politicians, military and other government fat cats treating their jobs as a drunken conversation at a frat party. I want to know that it is how they perform, I want to shame them and hopefully change the culture of diplomacy, if that is what the US calls it. And yes, I would like the same dirt o other countries, but having said that, give me the dirt on the country by which I am the most affected.
So a few hours have passed (Score:3, Interesting)
And things are starting to come out that are somewhat interesting but what's really fascinating to me is that this is sort of like an archive of the correspondence in World War 2 being opened to the public, only it's for right now, or close to now, a snapshot of the history of the present if you will.
It lets the world see a reflection of itself (though the state-trooper authority sunglasses of US diplomats) and where the path we're on might be leading.
So it might be a historical moment and it might just be that a bunch of people will get pissed off and and it'll blow over.
And I should probably get some sleep because I'm babbling.
Re:Administration has zero credibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:attacked by whom? (Score:3, Interesting)
The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, "My country, right or wrong." In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.
- Carl Schurz [bartleby.com]
I feel that actors like Assange perform an invaluable role in "setting right" my country. We've been for far too long operating under the assumption that anything relating to the military is sacrosanct.