WikiLeaks Under Attack; No Comment From State Department

WikiLeaks Under Attack; No Comment From State Department

www.theatlantic.com

On the day it's supposed to release hundreds of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, a move deemed by the U.S. State Department to put American lives in danger, the website has announced it is under a "denial of service" attack.

WikiLeaks' website cannot currently be accessed, and the organization tweeted just before noon on Sunday that "We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack." Such an attack typically involves the spamming of servers, in an attempt to overload them with requests and render them inoperable.

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Related Above Top Secret Threads:


Wikileaks To Publish Classified Documents From Russia, China

Related News Links:
news.ninemsn.com.au
beforeitsnews.com

(Reuters) - Text of a letter from the State Department to Julian Assange, the founder of whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, and his lawyer Jennifer Robinson concerning its intended publication of classified State Department documents. The letter, dated November 27, was released by the department.

Dear Ms. Robinson and Mr. Assange:

I am writing in response to your 26 November 2010 letter to U.S. Ambassador Louis B. Susman regarding your intention to again publish on your WikiLeaks site what you claim to be classified U.S. Government documents.

As you know, if any of the materials you intend to publish were provided by any government officials, or any intermediary without proper authorization, they were provided in violation of U.S. law and without regard for the grave consequences of this action. As long as WikiLeaks holds such material, the violation of the law is ongoing.

It is our understanding from conversations with representatives from The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel, that WikiLeaks also has provided approximately 250,000 documents to each of them for publication, furthering the illegal dissemination of classified documents.

Publication of documents of this nature at a minimum would:

* Place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals -- from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers to soldiers to individuals providing information to further peace and security;

* Place at risk on-going military operations, including operations to stop terrorists, traffickers in human beings and illicit arms, violent criminal enterprises and other actors that threaten global security; and,

* Place at risk on-going cooperation between countries - partners, allies and common stakeholders -- to confront common challenges from terrorism to pandemic diseases to nuclear proliferation that threaten global stability.

In your letter, you say you want -- consistent with your goal of "maximum disclosure" -- information regarding individuals who may be "at significant risk of harm" because of your actions.

Despite your stated desire to protect those lives, you have done the opposite and endangered the lives of countless individuals. You have undermined your stated objective by disseminating this material widely, without redaction, and without regard to the security and sanctity of the lives your actions endanger. We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained U.S. Government classified materials. If you are genuinely interested in seeking to stop the damage from your actions, you should: 1) ensure WikiLeaks ceases publishing any and all such materials; 2) ensure WikiLeaks returns any and all classified U.S. Government material in its possession; and 3) remove and destroy all records of this material from WikiLeaks' databases.

Sincerely,
The letter is signed by Harold Hongju Koh, legal adviser to the State Department

www.reuters.com...

Wikileaks is very controversial.

Endangering the lives of U.S. Diplomats...
Is this going to far?

In a highly unusual step reflecting the administration's grave concerns about the ramifications of the move, the State Department late on Saturday released a letter from its top lawyer to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his lawyer telling them that publication of the documents would be illegal and demanding that they stop it

In the letter, Koh said the publication of some 250,000 secret diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, which is expected on Sunday, will "place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals", "place at risk ongoing military operations" and "place at risk on-going cooperation between countries".

"They were provided in violation of US law and without regard for the grave consequences of this action," he said.

Koh said WikiLeaks should not publish the documents, return them to the US government and destroy any copies it may have in its possession or in computer databases.

www.theatlantic.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Wikileaks To Publish Classified Documents From Russia, China

edit on 28-11-2010 by burntheships because: format

Go join the 10 other threads speaking of this......

If its a duplicate, it will be closed. Thanks

WikiLeaks claimed that the WikiLeaks website is undergoing massive cyber attack attempts at the moment. WikiLeaks is about to publish more classified documents today. “We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack.” said WikiLeaks in a tweet.

hardgeek.org...

This is going to be worse than the 9/11 threads Won't know which thread to post in

Hey did ATS get hit too? Just after I saw the first thread on this this morning I was locked out and got a messages that ATS was 'under maintenance.

GREAT dramatic timing to do maintenance at that point

reply to post by zorgon


I agree, its overwhelming.
And I did have that same experience here this morning. I was unable to access most parts of ATS for well over and hour. With all of the Wikileaks theads...I could not find them it was hit and miss there for a while.

Gonna stick to these two... they were first. I will be too busy stocking food and firewood to handle more threads

Wikileaks - US Cables now out in Guardian! (LINK HERE!)
www.abovetopsecret.com...

US embassy cables leak sparks global diplomacy crisis
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Tango Down by "The Jester"

A computer hacker known as the "Jester" who calls himself a "hacktivist for good" is taking credit for temporarily taking down the WikiLeaks website.

WikiLeaks.org came under a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on Sunday shortly before it began releasing the first batch of some 250,000 US diplomatic cables.

The "Jester," a hacker who has targeted extremist websites in the past, claimed responsibility for the cyberattack on WikiLeaks in a message on his Twitter feed, [edit because: classified]

"www.__._ - TANGO DOWN - for attempting to endanger the lives of our troops, 'other assets' & foreign relations #wikileaks #fail," the message from "Jester" said.

www.rawstory.com...

So they have the hackers website... and no one can bust him?

Hmmmm so seeing as his site address is posted, everyone from ATS that visits the site will become a target, yes?

Me not going there

reply to post by zorgon


Yeah, good thinking there.
You are referring to the link at Raw Story right?

I did not post any links...
And just to be on the safe side...removed Jesters twitter address.

I am not clicking on it either.
Rumor has it that Jester works for The Pentagon.



Really? You Think?

Originally posted by zorgon
So they have the hackers website... and no one can bust him?

Knowing the URL of someone's website doesn't mean that you can just track them down. That's not the same as a physical location. Domains can be registered anonymously in countries where they don't care about subpoenas or legal writ. Domains can be hosted anywhere your money's good where they don't care about subpoenas or filing charges, either. It's trivial these days.

Hmmmm so seeing as his site address is posted, everyone from ATS that visits the site will become a target, yes?

Doubtful. The MO of the cracker in question doesn't seem to pertain to folks like you or I, that'd be script kiddy-on-IRC stuff. He claims to go after organizations that he feels are in opposition to the USA. From what little information I've managed to glean, he seems to stick to that.

I did not post any links...
And just to be on the safe side...removed Jesters twitter address.

I checked it earlier today from a disposable VM - nothing special there. Bragging.

Rumor has it that Jester works for The Pentagon.

Other rumors have it that he works for the Mossad. I think he's someone with a sizable botnet and a good C&C structure who thinks he's doing some good. The heavies - the folks whose livelihood is black hat stuff - don't post anywhere about it. For someone in that line of work, any publicity is bad publicity.