Misplaced Pages

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101-584: Following the United States diplomatic cables leak in December 2010, the organizers commenced DDoS attacks on websites of banks who had withdrawn banking facilities from WikiLeaks . In 2010, several Bollywood companies hired Aiplex Software to launch DDoS attacks on websites that did not respond to takedown notices . Piracy activists then created Operation Payback in September 2010 in retaliation. The original plan

202-424: A court martial proceeding and sentenced to thirty-five years imprisonment. She was released on 17 May 2017, after seven years total confinement, after her sentence had been commuted by President Barack Obama earlier that year. The first document, the so-called Reykjavik 13 cable , was released by WikiLeaks on 18 February 2010, and was followed by the release of State Department profiles of Icelandic politicians

303-420: A DDoS attack as part of Operation Payback. When asked about the attacks, Andrew Crossley, owner of ACS:Law, said: "It was only down for a few hours. I have far more concern over the fact of my train turning up 10 minutes late or having to queue for a coffee than them wasting my time with this sort of rubbish." When the site came back online a 350 MB file, which was a backup of the site, was visible to anyone for

404-460: A Norwegian daily newspaper, reported on 17 December 2010 that it had gained access to the full cable set of 251,287 documents. While it is unclear how it received the documents, they were apparently not obtained directly from WikiLeaks. Aftenposten started releasing cables that were not available in the official WikiLeaks distribution. As of 5 January 2011 , it had released just over one hundred cables unpublished by WikiLeaks, with about

505-483: A WikiLeaks cable that linked her with the alleged trade in illicit diamonds . On January 27, 2011, five males aged between 15 and 26 were arrested in early morning raids in the U.K. on suspicion of involvement, and the FBI executed 40 search warrants the same day. The United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office said that when its site was attacked, those responsible were depriving its citizens of access to information they have

606-692: A compressed BitTorrent of the entire site, including the hidden sub-folder. On 25 August 2011, the German magazine Der Freitag published an article about it, and while it left out the crucial details, there was enough to allow others to begin piecing the information together. The story was also published in the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information and the US Embassy in London and the US State Department were notified

707-557: A court battle with the RIAA over claims of copyright infringement. Not satisfied with the injunction, the RIAA announced its intention to continue the Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC trial to recover damages caused by the program. In retaliation, members of Operation Payback announced that they would attack RIAA's website on October 29, despite the fact that the group typically does not hit

808-447: A democratic right to access. Other critics claimed the attacks restricted Gene Simmons' right to free speech. A spokesman for the MPAA said, "It's troubling that these groups seem more concerned about the rights of those who steal and copy films, music, books, and other creative resources than the rights of American workers who are producing these products." There was also some criticism from

909-552: A free DNS hosting service , dropped WikiLeaks from its entries, citing DDoS attacks that "threatened the stability of its infrastructure", but the site was copied and made available at many other addresses, an example of the Streisand effect . Amazon.com removed WikiLeaks from its servers on 1 December 2010 at 19:30 GMT , and the latter website was unreachable until 20:17 GMT when the site had defaulted to its Swedish servers, hosted by Bahnhof . U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman , among

1010-461: A key defender of free speech and freedom of the press. Reaction to the release in September 2011 of the unredacted cables attracted stronger criticism, and was condemned by the five newspapers that had first published the cables in redacted form in November 2010. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded to the leaks saying, "This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy; it

1111-615: A large number of cables, both in English and in Russian translation. Some of their reporting was criticised for being inaccurate and posting misleading translations of cables. Russky Reporter denied misleading readers, and said they had early access to WikiLeaks cables through Israel Shamir . Yulia Latynina , writing in The Moscow Times , alleged that Shamir concocted a cable which allegedly quoted European Union diplomats' plans to walk out of

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1212-535: A letter to the U.S. Department of State, via his lawyer Jennifer Robinson , inviting them to "privately nominate any specific instances (record numbers or names) where it considers the publication of information would put individual persons at significant risk of harm that has not already been addressed". Harold Koh , the Legal Adviser of the Department of State , rejected the proposal, stating: "We will not engage in

1313-418: A million military dispatches from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. There might be more after that, including an immense bundle of confidential diplomatic cables", and Alan Rusbridger , the editor of The Guardian had contacted Bill Keller , editor of The New York Times , to see if he would be interested in sharing the dissemination of the information. Manning was suspected to have uploaded all that

1414-589: A month later. Later that year, Julian Assange , WikiLeaks' editor-in-chief, reached an agreement with media partners in Europe and the United States to publish the rest of the cables in redacted form, removing the names of sources and others in vulnerable positions. On 28 November, the first 220 cables were published under this agreement by El País (Spain), Der Spiegel (Germany), Le Monde (France), The Guardian (United Kingdom), and The New York Times (United States). WikiLeaks had planned to release

1515-399: A negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained U.S. Government classified materials". Koh added that the material was acquired illegally and "as long as WikiLeaks holds such material, the violation of the law is ongoing". Assange responded by writing back to the U.S. State Department that "you have chosen to respond in a manner which leads me to conclude that

1616-580: A part of a botnet . Utilising this tool, the coordinators of Operation Payback were able to quickly take down websites belonging to anti-piracy groups. Botnets of all sizes have also been used. Members of Operation Payback reportedly used an IRC channel to communicate about which targets to select, after which instructions for attacking the targets were produced and posted on various imageboards (4chan/7chan/711chan/420chan/808chan). Media such as Twitter and Facebook were also utilized for coordination, but on December 8, 2010, Operation Payback's Facebook page

1717-491: A short period of time. The backup, which included copies of emails sent by the firm, was downloaded and made available on various peer-to-peer networks and websites including The Pirate Bay . Some of the emails contained unencrypted Excel spreadsheets, listing the names and addresses of people that ACS:Law had accused of illegally sharing media. One contained more than 5,300 Sky broadband customers whom they had accused of illegally sharing pornography , while another contained

1818-601: A tag used by the US to mark sources it believes could be placed in danger; and more than 150 specifically mentioning whistleblowers ". On 2 September 2011, Australia's attorney general , Robert McClelland released a statement that the unredacted cables identified at least one ASIO officer, and that it was a crime in Australia to publish information which could identify an intelligence officer. McClelland said that "On occasions before this week, WikiLeaks redacted identifying features where

1919-429: A third of these related to Sri Lanka , and many related to Norway. Politiken , a Danish daily newspaper, announced on 8 January 2011 that it had obtained access to the full set of cables. NRC , a Dutch daily newspaper, and RTL Nieuws , a Dutch television news service, announced on 14 January 2011 that they had gained access to the about 3,000 cables sent from The Hague, via Aftenposten . NOS announced on

2020-429: A total damage amount, nor a method of calculating the number of infringements. The judge in the case rejected the proposal, holding that case law only supported statutory damages on a per-work basis for large-scale infringement, thus capping the potential award at $ 1.5 billion. On March 15, 2011, four days after the ruling, a report appeared on Law.com highlighting the judge's remark that the per-infringement award sought by

2121-408: A total of 38 hours. At some point during the course of this DDoS, GeneSimmons.com was hacked and redirected to ThePirateBay.org . In response to the attack Simmons wrote: Some of you may have heard a few popcorn farts re: our sites being threatened by hackers. Our legal team and the FBI have been on the case and we have found a few, shall we say "adventurous" young people, who feel they are above

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2222-481: Is 1.73 gigabytes in size. ... The password for this file is plain to see and identifiable for someone familiar with the material. Steffen Kraft On 29 August, WikiLeaks published over 130,000 unredacted cables. On 31 August, WikiLeaks tweeted a link to a torrent of the encrypted data. On 1 September 2011, WikiLeaks announced that an encrypted version of the un-redacted US State Department cables had been available for months. WikiLeaks said that it would publish

2323-411: Is an attack on the international community, the alliances and partnerships, the conventions and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity." Julian Assange is quoted as saying, "Of course, abusive, Titanic organizations, when exposed, grasp at all sorts of ridiculous straws to try and distract the public from the true nature of the abuse." John Perry Barlow , co-founder of

2424-689: Is more like a noisy political demonstration, like a mob surrounding a bank and refusing to let anyone in or out" said one cyber expert. Operation Payback members used a modified version of the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) to execute the DDoS attacks. In September 2010, a "Hive Mind" mode was added to the LOIC. While in Hive Mind mode, the LOIC connects to IRC , where it can be controlled remotely. This allows computers with LOIC installed on them to behave as if they were

2525-532: The Durban II speech by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , for publication in the pro-Putin Russky Reporter in December 2010. Shamir has denied this accusation. The Lebanese daily newspaper Al-Akhbar published about 183 cables on 2 December 2010. Australian-based Fairfax Media obtained access to the cables under a separate arrangement. Fairfax newspapers began releasing their own stories based on

2626-640: The Electronic Frontier Foundation , wrote a tweet saying: "The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops." About an hour prior to the planned release of the initial documents, WikiLeaks announced it was experiencing a massive distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS), but vowed to still release the cables and documents via pre-agreed prominent media outlets El País , Le Monde , Der Spiegel , The Guardian , and The New York Times . According to Arbor Networks , an Internet-analyst group,

2727-770: The Pirate Party UK and United States Pirate Party , which in a joint public statement urged the group to "Immediately cease the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks and to instead seek out a legal method to express your frustration and disquiet with the copyright industry, and their perversions of copyright law for personal gain." While acknowledging that the DDoS attacks on credit card and banking web sites serve as political protests, cyber experts said that Operation Payback has not done any long-term damage: most sites are back online, and people are still continuing to use their credit cards to make payments. "This

2828-692: The Swedish Prosecution Authority . On December 8, 2010, a coordinated DDoS attack by Operation Payback brought down both the MasterCard and Visa websites. On December 9, 2010, prior to a sustained DDoS attack on the PayPal website that caused a minor slowdown to its service, PayPal announced on its blog that it would release the frozen funds in the account of the Wau Holland Foundation that was raising funds for WikiLeaks, but would not reactivate

2929-457: The U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates , embassies, and diplomatic missions around the world. Dated between December 1966 and February 2010, the cables contain diplomatic analysis from world leaders, and the diplomats' assessment of host countries and their officials. On 30 July 2013, Chelsea Manning was convicted for theft of the cables and violations of the Espionage Act in

3030-598: The World Wide Web and they often seek to take measures to protect themselves from defacement or hacking in general. Websites represent the image of a company or organisation for whom defacement may cause significant loss. Visitors may lose faith in sites that cannot promise security and will become wary of performing online transactions . After defacement, sites have to be shut down for repairs and security review, sometimes for an extended period of time, causing expenses and loss of profit and value. In 2024, activists hacked

3131-465: The first amendment , they should get out of the business of selling books". On 2 December 2010, Tableau Software withdrew its visualizations from the contents of the leak, stating that it was directly due to political pressure from Joe Lieberman. On 4 December, PayPal cut off the account used by WikiLeaks to collect donations. On 6 December, the Swiss bank PostFinance announced that it had frozen

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3232-411: The " U.S. Copyright Group " – was evacuated by the police after an emailed bomb threat was received. It's believed the event could be connected to Anonymous. Non-related copyright or law firms sites, such as websheriff.com, were also attacked. These attacks were originally organized through an Internet Relay Chat channel. The attacks also became a popular topic on Twitter . On September 27, 2010,

3333-561: The Afghan and Iraqi war logs. The Washington Post reported that it also requested permission to see the documents, but was rejected for undisclosed reasons. CNN was originally supposed to receive an advance copy of the documents as well, but did not after it refused to sign a confidentiality agreement with WikiLeaks. The Wall Street Journal also refused advance access, apparently for similar reasons as CNN. The Russian weekly newspaper Russky Reporter ( Русский Репортёр ) has published

3434-529: The BBC called it "one of the most sensitive" leaks. WikiLeaks removed only a minority of the details of names and locations, and left the rest uncensored; details of the exact location of the assets were not included in the list. The list included critical facilities for the global supply chain, global communications, and economically important goods and services. An investigation into two senior Zimbabwe army commanders who communicated with US Ambassador Charles A. Ray

3535-486: The DDoS attack accounted for between two and four gigabits per second (Gbit/s) of additional traffic to the WikiLeaks host network, compared to an average traffic of between twelve and fifteen Gbit/s under ordinary conditions. The attack was slightly more powerful than ordinary DDoS attacks, though well below the maximum of 60 to 100 Gbit/s of other major attacks during 2010. On 2 December 2010, EveryDNS , who provide

3636-487: The DDoS attack on the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) unintentionally brought down 8,000 other small websites hosted on the same server. In September 2010, in an attempt to ensure that Portuguese citizens could not access thepiratebay.org , Associação do Comércio Audiovisual de Portugal (ACAPOR) filed a complaint against The Pirate Bay . The complaint was filed with

3737-459: The Department of State." He said the warning was from an "overzealous employee." According to a December 2010 article in The Guardian , access to WikiLeaks was blocked on government computers because the information was still classified. Website defacement Website defacement is an attack on a website that changes the visual appearance of a website or a web page . These are typically

3838-587: The Ecuadorian government and institutions on 6 April 2011. The publication was done the day after the Spanish newspaper El País published a cable in which the ambassador Heather Hodges showed concerns regarding corruption in the Ecuadorian National Police, especially of Gral. Jaime Hurtado Vaca, former Police commander. The ambassador was later declared persona non grata and was requested to leave

3939-637: The General Inspection of Cultural Activities, which is part of the Portuguese Ministry of Culture . According to the movie rental association, The Pirate Bay is directly responsible for about 15 million illegal downloads in Portugal every year. By installing a Pirate Bay block on all ISPs , ACAPOR hoped to decrease the financial damage it claims The Pirate Bay causes. On October 18, 2010, the ACAPOR website

4040-605: The ISPs. ACAPOR claimed that "the business of ISPs is illegal downloading." On October 4, 2010, Operation Payback launched an attack on the Ministry of Sound website and the Gallant Macmillan website. On October 7, 2010, they attacked the website of the Spanish copyright society, sgae.es. As of October 7, 2010, the total downtime for all websites attacked during Operation Payback was 537.55 hours. On October 15, 2010, Copyprotected.com

4141-548: The Palins. In December 2010, WikiLeaks came under intense pressure to stop publishing secret U.S. diplomatic cables. Corporations such as Amazon , PayPal , BankAmerica , Swiss bank PostFinance , MasterCard and Visa either stopped working with or froze their customers' donations to WikiLeaks due to political pressures. In response, those behind Operation Payback directed their activities against these companies. Operation Payback launched DDoS attacks against PayPal, PostFinance and

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4242-686: The U.S. and Britain eavesdropped on Secretary General Kofi Annan in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 , in apparent violation of international treaties prohibiting spying at the UN. The intelligence information the diplomats were ordered to gather included biometric information, passwords, and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications. It also included Internet and intranet usernames, e-mail addresses, web site URLs useful for identification, credit card numbers, frequent flier account numbers, and work schedules. The targeted human intelligence

4343-561: The US and the agents were not extradited to Germany. The Guardian released its coverage of the leaked cables in numerous articles, including an interactive database, starting on 28 November. El País released its report saying there was an agreement between the newspapers for simultaneous publication of the "internationally relevant" documents, but that each newspaper was free to select and treat those documents that primarily relate to its own country. Der Spiegel also released its preliminary report, with extended coverage promised for

4444-689: The United Nations, and other top UN officials; critiques and praises about the host countries of various U.S. embassies, discussion and resolutions towards ending ongoing tension in the Middle East, efforts for and resistance against nuclear disarmament , actions in the War on Terror , assessments of other threats around the world, dealings between various countries, U.S. intelligence and counterintelligence efforts, U.S. support of dictatorship and other diplomatic actions. The leaked cables revealed that diplomats of

4545-478: The WikiLeaks website. The full set of cables published by WikiLeaks can be browsed and searched by a variety of websites. The contents of the U.S. diplomatic cables leak describe in detail events and incidents surrounding international affairs from 274 embassies dating from 28 December 1966 to 28 February 2010. The diplomatic cables revealed numerous unguarded comments and revelations: US diplomats gathering personal information about Ban Ki-moon , Secretary-General of

4646-477: The account. Regarding the attacks, WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson denied any relation to the group and said, "We neither condemn nor applaud these attacks. We believe they are a reflection of public opinion on the actions of the targets." On the same day, a 16-year-old boy was arrested in The Hague , Netherlands , in connection with the distributed denial-of-service attacks against MasterCard and PayPal. The boy

4747-465: The argument that WikiLeaks' publications put lives at risk. According to IRTF reports, "the lives of cooperating Afghans, Iraqis, and other foreign interlocutors have been placed at increased risk" because of the leaks. The reports said that the leaks could also cause "serious damage" to "intelligence sources, informants and the Afghan population". A damage assessment by the IRTF, 111,000 IED-related documents in

4848-838: The assets of Assange; on the same day, MasterCard stopped payments to WikiLeaks, with Visa following them on 7 December. Official efforts by the U.S. government to limit access to, conversation about, and general spread of the cables leaked by WikiLeaks were revealed by leading media organizations. A 4 December 2010 article by MSNBC reported that the Obama administration had warned federal government employees and students in educational institutions studying towards careers in public service that they must refrain from downloading or linking to any WikiLeaks documents. However, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denied ordering students, stating, "We do not control private networks. We have issued no authoritative instructions to people who are not employees of

4949-532: The attack on PayPal . On November 9, 2010, Operation Payback temporarily ceased attacking websites. The hiatus lasted about four months, ending with an early March 2011 attack that temporarily took down the website of BMI , a prominent collection society operating on behalf of music publishers. This was followed by the aforementioned second attack on the RIAA website. On December 8, 2010, U.S. politician Sarah Palin announced that her website and personal credit card information were compromised. Palin's team believed

5050-416: The attack was executed by Anonymous, though Anonymous never commented about Palin as a possible target for any attack. Palin's technical team posted a screenshot of a server log file showing the wikileaks.org URL . Visa attacks had been denial of service attacks, but credit card data was not compromised. It is unknown whether Palin's card was compromised as part of a broad attack on Visa or a specific attack on

5151-503: The cables on 28 November 2010, and WikiLeaks made the cables selected by these newspapers and redacted by their journalists available on its website. "They are releasing the documents we selected", Le Monde ' s managing editor, Sylvie Kauffmann , said in an interview. WikiLeaks aimed to release the cables in phases over several months due to their global scope and significance. The first batch of leaks released comprised 220 cables. Further cables were subsequently made available on

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5252-490: The cables on their website. According to Glenn Greenwald , WikiLeaks decided that the "safest course was to release all the cables in full, so that not only the world's intelligence agencies but everyone had them, so that steps could be taken to protect the sources and so that the information in them was equally available." According to The Guardian, "the newly published archive" contained "more than 1,000 cables identifying individual activists ; several thousand labelled with

5353-629: The cables was the third in a series of U.S. classified document leaks distributed by WikiLeaks in 2010, following the Afghan War documents leak in July, and the Iraq War documents leak in October. Over 130,000 of the cables are unclassified, some 100,000 are labeled "confidential", around 15,000 have the higher classification "secret", and none are classified as "top secret" on the classification scale . In June 2010,

5454-465: The content to make it questionable, or including nonsensical or whimsical references to websites or publicly editable repositories to harm its reputation. Methods such as a web shell may be used to aid in website defacement. Religious and government websites are regularly targeted by hackers in order to display political or religious beliefs, whilst defacing the views and beliefs of others. Disturbing images and offensive phrases might be displayed in

5555-506: The corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed". The US said their troops had been fired on when they approached the house and the people were killed by a support air raid. A US inquiry three months later determined that the soldiers had acted according to the rules of engagement in taking down a safe house. The Iraqi government then said they would open an inquiry. In September 2011, the Iraqi government said they would reopen their investigation into

5656-519: The country as soon as possible. Several of the newspapers coordinating with WikiLeaks have published some of the cables on their own websites. In August 2010, Assange gave Guardian journalist David Leigh an encryption key and a URL where he could locate the full Cablegate file. In February 2011, shortly before Domscheit-Berg 's book appeared, Leigh and Luke Harding , another Guardian journalist, published WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy via Guardian Books. In it, Leigh revealed

5757-554: The damage caused was limited. One of the leaked documents included comments sent to the US State Department by Philip Alston , United Nations special rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions regarding the Ishaqi incident . Alston stated that US forces handcuffed and executed the residents of a house on 15 March 2006. The residents included five children under 5 years of age. Autopsies later confirmed that "all

5858-598: The details of 8,000 Sky customers and 400 Plusnet customers accused of infringing the copyright on music by sharing it on peer-to-peer networks . This alleged breach of the Data Protection Act has become part of the ongoing investigation into ACS:Law by the Information Commissioner's Office . On September 30, the Leesburg, Virginia office of Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver law firm – also doing business as

5959-575: The encryption passphrase in a book; he had received it from Assange so he could access a copy of the Cablegate file, and believed the passphrase was a temporary one, unique to that file. In August 2011, German weekly Der Freitag published some of these details, enabling others to piece the information together and decrypt the Cablegate files. The cables were then available online, fully unredacted. In response, WikiLeaks decided on 1 September 2011 to publish all 251,287 unedited documents. The publication of

6060-469: The encryption key Assange had given him. The key to the document is: ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay# . The encrypted file was placed in a hidden sub-folder on the WikiLeaks web server on which it had been placed to aid in transferring the file from WikiLeaks to Leigh and not removed due to an oversight. When the WikiLeaks website experienced denial-of-service attacks , mirror sites were setup and supporters created and shared

6161-404: The entire, unredacted archive in searchable form on its website the next day. The unredacted cables were published by Cryptome a day before WikiLeaks. Cryptome's owner, John Young, testified in 2020 that Cryptome has never been asked by US law enforcement to remove the unredacted cables and that they remain online. On 2 September, WikiLeaks published searchable, unredacted copies of all of

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6262-505: The evidence against him. The U.S. established an Information Review Task Force (IRTF) to investigate the impact of WikiLeaks' publications. In 2013, Brigadier general Robert Carr, who headed the IRTF, testified at Chelsea Manning's sentencing hearing that the task force had found no specific examples of anyone who had lost his or her life in reprisals due WikiLeaks' publication of material provided by Manning. Ed Pilkington wrote in The Guardian that Carr's testimony significantly undermined

6363-447: The following day. During the 2010 MIPCOM convention, Gene Simmons of KISS stated: Make sure your brand is protected ... Make sure there are no incursions. Be litigious. Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars. Don't let anybody cross that line. In response to Simmons' comments, members of Operation Payback switched their attentions to his two websites, SimmonsRecords.com and GeneSimmons.com , taking them both offline for

6464-541: The following two days, Operation Payback attacked a multitude of sites affiliated with the MPAA, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and British Phonographic Industry . Law firms such as ACS:Law , Davenport Lyons and Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver (of the US Copyright Group ) were also attacked. On September 21, 2010, the website of United Kingdom law firm ACS:Law was subjected to

6565-476: The government of the United Kingdom (UK) sent a DA-Notice to UK newspapers, which requested advance notice from newspapers regarding the expected publication. Index on Censorship pointed out that "there is no obligation on [the] media to comply". Under the terms of a DA-Notice, "[n]ewspaper editors would speak to [the] Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee prior to publication". The Guardian

6666-665: The group set up a new website with the intention of coordinating protests around the world to raise awareness of their cause. The date for the protest activities were on November 5, the intended day of the Gunpowder Plot , with which Anonymous heavily affiliates through its use of Guy Fawkes masks. The protest activity included an attack on the United States Copyright Office , after which the FBI launched an investigation. They later arrested one person accused of taking part in

6767-482: The incident as a result of the publication of the cable. Iraqi officials said that the cable was sufficient cause to deny the Americans any bases and demand that all troops leave. In December 2010, Der Spiegel reported that one of the cables showed that the US had placed pressure on Germany not to pursue the 13 suspected CIA agents involved in the 2003 abduction of Khalid El-Masri , a German citizen. The abduction

6868-460: The law. And, as stated in my MIPCOM speech, we will sue their pants off. First, they will be punished. Second, they might find their little butts in jail, right next to someone who's been there for years and is looking for a new girl friend. We will soon be printing their names and pictures. We will find you. You cannot hide. Stay tuned This led to additional attacks and subsequently more downtime for his websites. Later, Simmons's message

6969-566: The leaked cables on 7 December 2010. The Cuban government-run website Razones de Cuba started publishing Spanish translations of WikiLeaks documents on 23 December 2010. The Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Aftonbladet started reporting on the leaks in early December 2010. In Norway Verdens Gang ( VG ) brought the first leaks concerning the United States and the Norwegian government on 7 December. Aftenposten ,

7070-416: The leaks "may lead to the compromise of Counter IED tactics, techniques and procedures used by Coalition Forces conducting exploitation of IED events". In 2020, a lawyer for the US said that "sources, whose redacted names and other identifying information was contained in classified documents published by Wikileaks, who subsequently disappeared, although the US can't prove at this point that their disappearance

7171-621: The magazine Wired reported that the U.S. State Department and embassy personnel were concerned that Chelsea Manning , a United States Army soldier charged with the unauthorized download of classified material while stationed in Iraq, had leaked diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks rejected the report as inaccurate: "Allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified U.S. embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect". However, during that same month (June 2010), The Guardian had been offered "half

7272-497: The members of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee who had questioned Amazon in private communication on the company's hosting of WikiLeaks and the illegally obtained documents, commended Amazon for the action; WikiLeaks, however, responded by stating on its official Twitter page that "WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free—fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe", and later that "If Amazon are so uncomfortable with

7373-425: The members received a plea deal, reducing their felony charges to a single misdemeanor. The defendants were penalized with jail sentences, and one defendant with community service. United States diplomatic cables leak The United States diplomatic cables leak , widely known as Cablegate , began on Sunday, 28 November 2010 when WikiLeaks began releasing classified cables that had been sent to

7474-472: The next day. Its cover for 29 November was also leaked with the initial report. The New York Times initially covered the story in a nine-part series spanning nine days, with the first story published simultaneously with the other outlets. The New York Times was not originally intended to receive the leak, allegedly due to its unflattering portrayal of the site's founder, but The Guardian decided to share coverage, citing earlier cooperation while covering

7575-460: The previous weeks and months additional measures had been taken to improve the security of the system and prevent leaks. On 22 November, an announcement was made via WikiLeaks' Twitter feed that the next release would be "7× the size of the Iraq War Logs ". U.S. authorities and the media had speculated, at the time, that they could contain diplomatic cables. Prior to the expected leak,

7676-406: The process, as well as a signature of sorts, to show who was responsible for the defacement. Websites are not only defaced for political reasons; many defacers do it just for the thrill. For example, there are online contests in which hackers are awarded points for defacing the largest number of web sites in a specified amount of time. Corporations are also targeted more often than other websites on

7777-510: The record companies might total in the "trillions"; the report estimated $ 75 trillion in its attention-grabbing headline (USA's nominal GDP in 2012-2013 was about $ 16–17 trillion). This figure was repeated in PC Magazine on March 23. An Operation Payback call-to-arms followed, citing the $ 75 trillion figure as if it were still being actively sought by the RIAA, and a DDoS attack on the RIAA website commenced on March 25. Around October 28, 2010,

7878-466: The rest over several months, and as of 11 January 2011, 2017 had been published. The remaining cables were published in September 2011 after a series of events compromised the security of a WikiLeaks file containing the cables. This included WikiLeaks volunteers placing an encrypted file containing all WikiLeaks data online as "insurance" in July 2010, in case something happened to the organization. In February 2011 David Leigh of The Guardian published

7979-486: The safety of individuals or national security could be put at risk. It appears this hasn't occurred with documents that have been distributed across the internet this week." According to The Guardian at the time, this meant "Julian Assange could face prosecution in Australia." After WikiLeaks published the unredacted cables, some journalists and contacts of the US government allegedly faced retaliation. For example according to media reports, Ethiopian journalist Argaw Ashine

8080-642: The same day that it had obtained these same cables from WikiLeaks. Die Welt , a German daily newspaper, announced on 17 January 2011 that they had gained access to the full set of cables, via Aftenposten . The Costa Rican newspaper La Nación announced on 1 March 2011 it had received 827 cables from WikiLeaks which it started publishing the next day. 764 of these were sent from the U.S. Embassy in San José while 63 were sent from other embassies and deal with Costa Rican affairs. The Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo started releasing 343 cables related to

8181-421: The same day. Denn der Freitag hat eine Datei, die auch unredigierte US-Botschaftsdepeschen enthält. ... Die Datei mit dem Namen "cables.csv" ist 1,73 Gigabyte groß. ... Das Passwort zu dieser Datei liegt offen zutage und ist für Kenner der Materie zu identifizieren. Because der Freitag have discovered a file on the internet which includes the unredacted embassy files. ... The file is called "cables.csv" and

8282-542: The same target twice. On October 29, riaa.org indeed was taken offline via denial-of-service attack . After the attack, riaa.com and riaa.org sites were inaccessible in Europe. Operation Payback's main site was attacked later that day, and they subsequently moved their website from tieve.tk to anonops.net . During the damages phase of the LimeWire trial, the RIAA attempted to switch from seeking statutory damages per-work to seeking them per-infringement, but did not quote

8383-411: The supposed risks are entirely fanciful and you are instead concerned to suppress evidence of human rights abuse and other criminal behaviour". Ahead of the leak, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other American officials contacted governments in several countries about the impending release. The five newspapers that had obtained an advance copy of all leaked cables began releasing

8484-503: The system. Such a large quantity of secret information was available to a wide audience because, as The Guardian alleged, after the 11 September attacks an increased focus had been placed on sharing information since gaps in intra-governmental information sharing had been exposed. More specifically, the diplomatic, military, law enforcement, and intelligence communities would be able to do their jobs better with this easy access to analytic and operative information. A spokesman said that in

8585-405: The work of hackers , who break into a web server and replace the hosted website with malware or a website of their own. Defacement is generally meant as a kind of electronic graffiti and, like other forms of vandalism , is used to spread messages by politically motivated "cyber protesters" or hacktivists . Website defacement can involve adding questionable content or removing or changing

8686-448: The world —this is Lexington ." On December 13, 2010 Julian Assange called for supporters to protect WikiLeaks and said that "Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and others are instruments of US foreign policy" in a statement that was seen as likely to add cyber attacks being perpetrated by Anonymous in support of WikiLeaks. The following is a list of sites and domains known to have been targeted: Operation Payback's attempt to take down Amazon.com

8787-507: Was SQL injected and defaced, and three days later Operation Payback launched a DDoS attack against the UK Intellectual Property Office . Production companies SatelFilm.at and Wega-Film.at were hit by "drive-by" DDoSes on October 21, 2010, in response to their efforts to gain a court injunction against an ISP that refused to block a movie-streaming website, Operation Payback then knocked porn website Hustler.com offline

8888-479: Was defaced , presenting text from Operation Payback and a redirect to The Pirate Bay after a few seconds. In addition to defacing the website, a copy of the email database of ACAPOR was uploaded to The Pirate Bay. The leaked e-mails so far revealed ACAPOR's methods of denunciation, its dissatisfaction with the Portuguese government and justice system, its perception of the copyright debate as war, and its antagonism with

8989-537: Was aborted after they failed to recruit enough users to their botnet; CNN noted that the massive Amazon website "is almost impossible to crash." In late December, the FBI began to raid suspected participants in Operation Payback. At the beginning of 2011, Operation Payback brought down Zimbabwean government websites after the Zimbabwean President's wife sued a newspaper for $ 15 million for publishing

9090-401: Was an IRC operator under the nickname of Jeroenz0r. On December 10, 2010, The Daily Telegraph reported that Anonymous had threatened to disrupt British government websites if Assange were extradited to Sweden. Anonymous issued a press release in an attempt to clarify the issue. Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow described the attacks as "the shot heard round

9191-481: Was arrested on "entirely unproven corruption charges", subjected to a " kangaroo court ", and given a 25-year prison sentence . Marquardt said Marafa's only real crime was having told him that he "might be interested" in the presidency one day. When the cable was released, it became frontpage news in Cameroon and led directly to Marafa's arrest. The Ambassador at the time, Robert Jackson, said Marafa's trial did not specify

9292-476: Was interrogated several times about a reference to him in a cable talking to a government source. The source told him about plans to arrest the editors of the critical Ethiopian weekly Addis Neger . The editors for Addis Neger fled the country the next month. Ashine was subjected to government harassment and intimidation, and was forced to flee the country. According to the former US Ambassador to Cameroon from 2004 to 2007, Niels Marquardt , Marafa Hamidou Yaya

9393-719: Was launched, with the two facing a possible court martial. On 14 September the Committee to Protect Journalists said that an Ethiopian journalist named in the cables was forced to flee the country but WikiLeaks accused the CPJ of distorting the situation "for marketing purposes". Al Jazeera replaced its news director, Wadah Khanfar , on 20 September after he was identified in the cables. The naming of mainland China residents reportedly "sparked an online witch-hunt by Chinese nationalist groups, with some advocating violence against those now known to have met with U.S. Embassy staff." US officials said

9494-537: Was obtained to WikiLeaks, which chose to release the material in stages so as to have the greatest possible impact. According to The Guardian , all the diplomatic cables were marked "Sipdis", denoting "secret internet protocol distribution", which means they had been distributed via the closed U.S. SIPRNet , the U.S. Department of Defense's classified version of the civilian internet. More than three million U.S. government personnel and soldiers have access to this network. Documents marked "top secret" are not included in

9595-465: Was probably carried out through "extraordinary rendition". German prosecutors in Munich had issued arrest warrants for the 13 suspected CIA operatives involved in the abduction. The cables released by Wikileaks showed that after contact from the then-Deputy US Ambassador John M. Koenig and US diplomats the Munich public prosecutor's office and Germany's Justice Ministry and Foreign Ministry all cooperated with

9696-682: Was removed and its official Twitter account was suspended. Additionally a federal court order forced Encyclopedia Dramatica to delete its Operation Payback article, which featured a detailed history of the operation, including personal information of some individuals associated with the companies attacked. In July 2011, 14 members of Operation Avenge Assange were arrested. In October 2013, 13 members of Operation Payback were indicted in Federal court in Alexandria, Virginia as co-conspirators in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 and 18 U.S.C. § 1030 . In 2014, some of

9797-440: Was removed from his website. More than one year later, in December 2011, a person supposedly known under the nickname "spydr101" was arrested in relation to the attack against GeneSimmons.com. He was charged with conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer. On October 26, 2010, LimeWire was ordered to disable the "searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality" after losing

9898-497: Was requested in a process known as the National Humint Collection Directive , and was aimed at foreign diplomats of US allies as well. WikiLeaks released the cable on 28 November 2010. The Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative was contained in a February 2009 diplomatic cable to the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton , which was leaked, redacted and released by WikiLeaks in 2010. On 6 December 2010,

9999-503: Was revealed to have been the source of the copy of the documents given to The New York Times in order to prevent the British government from obtaining any injunction against its publication. The Pakistani newspaper Dawn stated that the U.S. newspapers The New York Times and The Washington Post were expected to publish parts of the diplomatic cables on 28 November, including 94 Pakistan-related documents. On 26 November, Assange sent

10100-400: Was the result of being outed by Wikileaks." Reactions to the leak in 2010 varied. Western governments expressed strong disapproval, while the material generated intense interest from the public and journalists. Some political leaders referred to Assange as a criminal, while blaming the U.S. Department of Defense for security lapses. Supporters of Assange referred to him in November 2010 as

10201-504: Was to attack Aiplex Software directly, but upon finding some hours before the planned DDoS that another individual had taken down the firm's website on their own, Operation Payback moved to launching attacks against the websites of copyright stringent organisations Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and International Federation of the Phonographic Industry , giving the two websites a combined total downtime of 30 hours. In

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