The pimping of Wikileaks is of an unprecedented scale, something is wrong, it has to be a distraction, but from what? Keep your eyes peeled and your nostrils skyward, for anything that doesn’t involve the word “wikileaks”.

Having said that, I’m going to be hypocriticus maximus with a big long post all about said “word”, because something is also very wrong with Wikileaks.

August 7, 2010
Wikileaks, Legitimate Whistleblowers or CointelPro?
the intel hub.com

Who is Julian Assange and how has Wikileaks managed to out run both the CIA and NSA? Could Wikileaks be a well placed group of Cointelpro Agents, started not only to take the spotlight off other, more legitimate whistleblowers, but to be used as a pawn in order to demonize all whistleblowers as potential threats to national security? The most scary aspect of this whole psi op is the fact that there is now an open call to ban whistleblowers and in extreme instances execute them! Republican Congressman Mike Rogers has openly declared that all whistleblowers should be tried for treason and then executed.

Is Wikileaks merely a false flag operation to stamp out free speech once and for all?

Wikileaks, after losing its US host, French host, DNS registration and PayPal services all in the space of a week, has taken the step of farming out the website to anyone who has server resources and cares to help.

Mass-mirroring Wikileaks


This is a brilliant idea, if a) it were conducted securely, and b) if there were no question mark over Wikileaks being an intelligence agency front.

But a) it is not and b) there is.

WikiLeakS.CH - new website
Wikileak.org (Not Wikileaks)

The demise of the WikiLeakS.org website has led to the creation of a new slightly graphically enhanced website design at http://WikiLeakS.CH Incredibly, this website does not have any kind of Digital Certificate, not even a self signed one. Therefore there is no SSL/TLS encryption to protect sensitive personal data like names, emails and phone numbers etc from being snooped when submitting a web form.

However there are now two such web forms, one for Journalists to Register to perhaps, if they are lucky, be put on the list of "reliable and trustworthy organizations" to "collaborate" with on "future releases".

There is also now a Mirrors page. This second unencrypted web form is even more of a candidate for SSL/TLS encryption protection, since it asks for Login Details and Passwords to allow wikileaks to upload arbitarary content to mirror sites.

They are asking for:

IP Address of your server * add ":port" if you are using a port other than 22 for SSH or 21 for FTP, IPv6 should be written with brackets [ ] like [2001:67e::44]:22
Login we should use to access this server

Password we should use, ONLY if we should use FTP

Absolute path where we should upload the html data

Hostname you configured on your http server to serve the pages (if not www.wikileaks.org)

How stupid does anyone have to be to simply hand such details over to wikileaks, without any encryption and even without establishing two way contact with them first?

If Wikileaks does turn out to be a spook op, imagine what havoc they can unleash on the www, with potentially 1000’s of web servers, web servers operated by info disseminators for the purpose of exposing the very cancer that they have just given all their private server access data to.


Jan 23, 2010
PayPal suspends donations to WikiLeakS.org, who then "web bug" their own website.
Wikileak.org (Not Wikileaks)

Wikileaks:

Paypal has as of 23rd of January 2010 frozen WikiLeaks assets. This is the second time that this happens. The last time we struggled for more than half a year to resolve this issue.

PayPal usually suspends non-profit organisations, because PayPal have to comply with local taxation laws involving the tax exempt status of such organisations, and with the world wide anti-money laundering red tape and bureaucracy.

WikiLeakS.org proudly boasts that none of the identities of any of their whistleblower sources have been compromised. We have always been critical of their much more lackadaisical approach to the anonymity of the web site visitors.

What then, were the WikiLeakS.org web team thinking of, by using a PayPal image which is hosted on a Canadian angling supplies website called www.alainfishing.com ?

"Fishing" for PayPal donations is going to make quite a few people wonder if this is a "phishing" scam.

Looking at some of the current WikiLeakS.org home page HTML source code, they appear to have commented out their PayPal link to the Wau Holland charitable foundation in Germany, but they are deep linking (for no good reason) to a PayPal web graphic, hosted on a third party website, a Canadian sports angling website which sells brightly coloured fishing bobs.

This effectively means that the web server log files of www.alainfishing.com, are now tracking most of the visitors to the WikiLeakS.org web page - in effect WikiLeakS.org have web bugged their own supposedly anonymity protected website.

This potentially compromises the anonymity of the vast majority the WikiLeaKS.org home page visitors, regardless of whether they are interested in PayPal or not, and anyone foolish enough to try to submit a whistleblower leak at the moment, without any timescale of when or if it will ever be published by the (suspended) WikiLeakS.org project.

This "web bug" effect also applies to the embedded YouTube Video of the Berlin 26C3 conference speech.

Jan 24, 2010
WikiLeakS.org and the TipiT.to tip jar - another "web bug"
Wikileak.org (Not Wikileaks)

WikiLeakS.org is still not publishing any of their old or new whistleblower leaks, whilst still asking for new whistleblower leak submissions, and, still asking for money. However, now casual visitors to the suspended WikiLeakS.org web page will see a typical "appeals thermometer" graphical image.

https://tipit.to/img/thermo?style=1&tipjarId=1&currency=EUR...

Even though the PayPal graphic is now being served locally, rather than as a Deep Link from the Canadian fishing supplies website, this Web Bug problem has simply been replaced by a new one.

The new "thermometer appeal" graphical image is not a static graphical image, served locally from the WikiLeakS.org web servers.

This means that the TipiT.to webservers, and the Amazon Web Services, Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2 instance which they use, are collecting Communications Traffic Data logfiles, including visit time and date, IP address, Web browser details, language settings etc., from most of the visitors to the WikiLeakS.org page, even if they do not intend to proceed to the tip jar donations form.

N.B. since the TipiT.to webs server does not appear to be serving a robots.txt file it may well be that snapshots of the "latest tips / financial contributors" to WikiLeakS.org and any other website will be captured automatically and "forever", by Google, Yahoo, Bing and other web search engines.

The embedded YouTube video script remains as before, also potentially betraying the anonymity of visitors to the WikiLeakS.org website, in log files over which WIkiLeakS.org have no control.

Why is the simple website anonymity protection measure of serving copies of graphical images only from your own web server so difficult for the WikiLeakS.org people, who one would expect to live and breathe internet anonymity and security, to understand?

May 19, 2010
WikiLeakS.org main website and archive (mostly) returns online after fund raising strike
Wikileak.org (Not Wikileaks)

The main WikiLeaks.org website seems to have returned online, after the 6 month fund raising strike, which was punctuated by high profile releases, and one way Twitter broadcasts. Some changes are evident:

• The wiki Special Pages which showed recent updates have been turned off.

• The uploaded document files now only download from the unencrypted http://file.wikileaks.org, without any SSL or Tor protection as they used to.

• Torrent and Magnet downloads are offered instead.

They still have not bothered to get a new SSL / TLS Digital Certificate which does not use the deprecated MD5 cryptographic hash.
Of more concern is, that whilst some old Comments and analyses on the "leaked" documents by the public, are available, you can no longer submit any new ones.

There is no wiki in WikiLeakS.org

June 14, 2010
Wanted by the US: WikiLeaks founder keeps his head down
smh.com

Julian Assange is in hiding overseas after the US military arrested one of its own soldiers, Bradley Manning, and accused him of leaking a secret video of a US Army helicopter gunning down civilians in Iraq in 2007. The US is now desperate to find Mr Assange before he leaks thousands of hugely embarrassing state diplomatic cables.

July 31, 2010
Researcher detained at U.S. border
cnet.com

A security researcher involved with the Wikileaks Web site was detained by U.S. agents at the border for three hours and questioned about the controversial whistleblower project as he entered the country on Thursday to attend a hacker conference here. Jacob Appelbaum was pulled aside by customs and border protection agents who told him he was randomly selected for a security search.

Appelbaum, a U.S. citizen, was taken into a room, frisked and his bag was searched. Receipts from his bag were photocopied and his laptop was inspected. Officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Army then told him he was not under arrest but was being detained.

They asked questions about Wikileaks, asked for his opinions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and asked where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was.

After about three hours, Appelbaum was given his laptop back but the agents kept his three mobile phones

He was also approached by two FBI agents at the Defcon conference after his presentation on the Tor, an online privacy protection project.

August 7, 2010
Wikileaks, Legitimate Whistleblowers or CointelPro?
the intel hub.com

Who is Julian Assange and how has Wikileaks managed to out run both the CIA and NSA? Could Wikileaks be a well placed group of Cointelpro Agents, started not only to take the spotlight off other, more legitimate whistleblowers, but to be used as a pawn in order to demonize all whistleblowers as potential threats to national security? The most scary aspect of this whole psi op is the fact that there is now an open call to ban whistleblowers and in extreme instances execute them! Republican Congressman Mike Rogers has openly declared that all whistleblowers should be tried for treason and then executed.

Aug 17, 2010
Cyberwar Against Wikileaks? Good Luck With That
io9.com

Julian Assange told a gathering in London that Wikileaks is moving ahead with plans to publish the remaining 15,000 records from the Afghan war logs, despite a demand from the Pentagon that WikiLeaks "return" its entire cache of published and unpublished classified U.S. documents. "The United States has the cyber capabilities to prevent WikiLeaks from disseminating those materials," wrote Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen. "Will President Obama order the military to deploy those capabilities? … If Assange remains free and the documents he possesses are released, Obama will have no one to blame but himself."

In 2008, federal judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco ordered the WikiLeaks.org domain name seized as part of a lawsuit filed by Julius Baer Bank and Trust, a Swiss bank. Two weeks later the judge admitted he'd acted hastily, and he had the site restored.

The U.S. government has other, less legal, options, of course - the "cyber" capabilities Thiessen alludes to. The Pentagon probably has the ability to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks against WikiLeaks' public-facing servers. If it doesn't, the Army could rent a formidable botnet from Russian hackers for less than the cost of a Humvee.

Aug 21, 2010
WikiLeaks founder charged with rape
abc.net.au

Julian Assange has been charged in Sweden with rape and molestation, the National Prosecutor's Office said on Saturday. Assange told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter via email he had not been contacted by police.

Aug 22, 2010
Warrant for Wikileaks founder dropped
abc.net.au

Swedish prosecutors said Julian Assange was not suspected of rape in Sweden and was no longer wanted for questioning. "Chief prosecutor Eva Finne has come to the decision that Julian Assange is not suspected of rape," said a statement on the prosecution service's website.

A prosecution service spokesperson, Karin Rosander, said earlier that "Julian Assange is wanted for two different issues; one of them is that he's suspected of rape in Sweden."

August 23, 2010
Wall Street Journal: How WikiLeaks Keeps Its Funding Secret
Wikileak.org (Not Wikileaks)

We have previously commented that WkiLeakS.org, or similar organisations, actually require the same sort off "tax haven" and "tax avoidance" techniques employed by the Private Banking industry which they so gleefully try to expose the details of "for maximum political effect". The Wall Street Journal has been "investigating", without actually revealing the details of any of the front companies and foundations, apart from some of the ones which have appeared on the WikiLeakS.org financial contributions pages. It is is disappointing that a financial sector newspaper like the Wall Street Journal, cannot find, or will not publish, any more details, other than those provided by Julian Assange.

WSJ –

The controversial website WikiLeaks, which argues the cause of openness in leaking classified or confidential documents, has set up an elaborate global financial network to protect a big secret of its own--its funding. Some governments and corporations angered by the site's publications have already sued WikiLeaks or blocked access to it, and the group fears that its money and infrastructure could be targeted further, founder Julian Assange said in an interview in London.

In response, the site has established a complex system for collecting and disbursing its donations to obscure their origin and use, Mr. Assange said. Anchoring the system is the Wau Holland foundation in Germany established in memory of a computer hacker who died in 2001.

WikiLeaks encourages donors to contribute to its account at the foundation, which under German law can't publicly disclose the names of donors. Because the foundation "is not an operational concern, it can't be sued for doing anything. So the donors' money is protected, in other words, from lawsuits," Mr. Assange said.

Nonsense! There are several Islamic Charities which not only have been sued, but have subjected to anti-terrorism investigations and have had their financial assets frozen, even though they have never been "operational concerns" either.

No "tax evasion" / "tax avoidance" trust funds and front companies registered in tax havens are "operational concerns" either, but that does not prevent various tax authorities going after them and their beneficiaries.

The German foundation is only one piece of the WikiLeaks network. "We're registered as a library in Australia, we're registered as a foundation in France, we're registered as a newspaper in Sweden," Mr. Assange said. WikiLeaks has two tax-exempt charitable organizations in the U.S., known as 501C3s, that "act as a front" for the website.
Hendrik Fulda, deputy board chairman of the foundation said WikiLeaks needs €10,000 to €15,000 a month to maintain its Web presence. Late last year, when donors were contributing only €2,000 to €3,000 per month, WikiLeaks was struggling to survive, he said. So it shut down its website in December, leaving up only an appeal for donors to transfer money to the group via the Wau Holland Foundation. Soon, donations per month increased 20-fold.

WikiLeaks reopened its website in May, but "within days ... donations dropped back to near their former level," Mr. Fulda said.

The fluctuation caught the attention of Wau Holland's banking partners including eBayInc.'s PayPal, which demanded explanations for the surge and fall in donations. "I explained it wasn't money laundering, just WikiLeaks donations," Mr. Fulda said.

WikiLeaks has tried to diversify away from PayPal by adding other payment options to its site, including Flattr.com, a payment system based in Sweden, and Moneybookers, a system based in the U.K.

A spokeswoman for Moneybookers said the company used to provide services to WikiLeaks but "as they don't adhere to Moneybookers' standards, the agreement was terminated.

Note also that another online money payment system which WikiLeakS.org has used during their dispute with PayPal, called TipIt.to seems to have gone "tits up" at the end of February 2010 due to "fraudulent transactions"

October 14, 2010
WikiLeaks says funding has been blocked after government blacklisting
guardian.co.uk

The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims that it has had its funding blocked and that it is the victim of financial warfare by the US government. Moneybookers, a British-registered internet payment company that collects WikiLeaks donations, emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist.

Moneybookers moved against WikiLeaks on 13 August, according to the correspondence, less than a week after the Pentagon made public threats of reprisals against the organisation.

Moneybookers wrote to Assange: "Following an audit of your account by our security department, we must advise that your account has been closed … to comply with money laundering or other investigations conducted by government authorities."

When Assange emailed to ask what the problem was, he says he was told in response by Daniel Stromberg, the Moneybookers e-commerce manager for the Nordic region: “When I did my regular overview of my customers, I noticed that something was wrong with your account and I emailed our risk and legal department to solve this issue.

"Below I have copied the answer I received from them: 'Hi Daniel, you can inform him that initially his account was suspended due to being accessed from a blacklisted IP address. However, following recent publicity and the subsequently addition of the WikiLeaks entity to blacklists in Australia and watchlists in the USA, we have terminated the business relationship.'"

Moneybookers is registered in the UK but controlled by the Bahrain-based group Investcorp.

Nov 13, 2010
WikiLeaks registers company in Iceland
abc.net.au

WikiLeaks has registered in media-friendly Iceland its first known legal entity - a business that so far has no office or activity. Kristinn Hrafnsson said: "We have registered Sunshine Press Productions as a business in Iceland.”

Nov 19, 2010
WikiLeaks boss to challenge rape warrant
abc.net.au

Julian Assange plans to challenge a Swedish court decision ordering his arrest on charges of rape and sexual molestation. Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, says "Both the prosecutor and the defence agree that it was an incident of consensual sex where the condom broke. They are saying that amounts to rape, we are saying it doesn't," he said.

Nov 27, 2010
US expecting 'worst case' Wikileaks release
abc.net.au

Whistleblower website Wikileaks' plan to post masses of confidential US government documents online is irresponsible and will put lives at risk, the US state department says. "We are all bracing for what may be coming and condemn Wikileaks for the release of classified material," state department spokesman Philip Crowley said.

Wikileaks is expected to put online 3 million leaked cables covering US dealings and its confidential views of other countries.

Nov 29, 2010
WikiLeaks cables the 9/11 of world diplomacy
herald sun.com.au

WikiLeaks releases 250,000 documents.

Nov 29, 2010
US fumes over WikiLeaks documents
news.com.au

US Republican congressman Peter King, the ranking member of the House of Representatives' Homeland Security Committee, urged the US attorney general to prosecute Assange for espionage. He went on to urge the State Department to designate WikiLeaks a "Foreign Terrorist Organisation'', saying it "posed a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States'', in a statement from his office.

Nov 29, 2010
WikiLeaks cables not so damaging: expert
abc.net.au

A small number of the 250,000 cables have been released, and the US government has warned the release of the top-secret documents could endanger lives. But Dr Bruce Bechtol, a Professor of International Relations at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, says that information is widely available.

Nov 30, 2010
US slams 'criminals' behind WikiLeaks
abc.net.au

The Obama administration has denounced the leaking of mountains of classified material by WikiLeaks, calling it a serious crime and an attack on the whole world.

Nov 30, 2010
WikiLeaks says major bank is its next target
abc.net.au

Julian Assange has claimed a fresh "mega leak" will target a major US bank early next year.

Nov 30, 2010
Palin: Hunt Wikileaks director
the star.com

Sarah Palin is demanding the world hunt down the director of Wikileaks “with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.” On her Facebook site, Palin described Julian Assange as “an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.”

Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly thinks whoever leaked the embassy memos should be executed. Wikileaks, he noted with a knowing nod, is “based in Sweden.”

December 1, 2010
Sarah Palin demands Assange is treated like Al Qaeda terrorist
daily mail.co.uk

'Assange is not a "journalist," any more than the "editor" of al Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a "journalist." 'His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban.”

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder today said the American government is in the midst of an 'active, ongoing criminal investigation' into WikiLeaks.

The latest disclosures, involving classified and sensitive State Department documents, jeopardised the security of the nation, its diplomats, intelligence assets and relationships with foreign governments, General Holder said.

Australian attorney general Robert McClelland said police are investigating whether the latest leak of secret U.S. documents had broken any Australian laws.

There have also been claims that the U.S. is putting pressure on Australia to cancel Mr Assange's Australian passport, but this was flatly denied by Mr McClelland.

Dec 1, 2010
Interpol issues arrest alert for WikiLeaks boss
abc.net.au

Global police agency Interpol has alerted member states to arrest WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on suspicion of rape on the basis of a Swedish arrest warrant. "There is a public 'Red Notice' on behalf of Sweden," an Interpol spokeswoman said.

Assange, whose current location is unclear, contested the warrant in a Swedish appeals court, but his first bid to get it thrown out was rejected last week and he has lodged a second appeal.

Dec 2, 2010
Amazon pulls plug on WikiLeaks
abc.net.au

"This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the WikiLeaks website," US Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement. "I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on WikiLeaks' previous publication of classified material," he added.

Senator Lieberman said Amazon's decision to cut off WikiLeaks "is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material".

Amazon did not respond to repeated requests from AFP for confirmation that it was hosting WikiLeaks.

Dec 2, 2010
Swedish Court Confirms Arrest Warrant for WikiLeaks Founder
nytimes.com

LONDON — Sweden’s highest court refused on Thursday to allow Julian Assange, to appeal a court order seeking his arrest to face questioning over alleged sex crimes, his lawyer said. Thursday’s ruling came a day after Interpol, the global police body, said it had been circulating a so-called Red Notice seeking Mr. Assange’s arrest for almost two weeks.

Dec 2, 2010
Wikileaks chief: What will he do next?
independent.co.uk

Despite accusations that Julian Assange is on the run, The Independent has learnt that Scotland Yard has been in contact with his legal team for more than a month but is waiting for further instruction before arresting him. Police forces around the globe have been asked to arrest Assange. But the 39-year-old Australian supplied the Metropolitan Police with contact details upon arriving in the UK in October. Police sources confirmed that they have a telephone number for Mr Assange and are fully aware of where he is staying.

Dec 2, 2010
British police asked to join hunt for Julian Assange
telegraph.co.uk

On Tuesday, Interpol issued a “red notice” to 188 countries, stating that Mr Assange was wanted in Sweden and asking anyone with information about him to contact their local or national police force. The notice has reportedly been brought to the attention of all British forces by the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which is handling the case. Mr Assange’s precise location remains unknown but he is a frequent visitor to Britain.

A source at Scotland Yard said it has received no information about Mr Assange’s whereabouts.

Dec 2, 2010
Arrest Warrant for "Sex Crimes" Against Julian Assange
washington’s blog

Interpol has issued an arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange for an obscure Swedish law against having sex without a condom. Former attorney for Assange - James D. Catlin confirmed that: The consent of both women to sex with Assange has been confirmed by prosecutors.

Assange's current London attorney - Mark Stephens - told AOL news that Swedish prosecutors told him that Assange is wanted not for allegations of rape, as previously reported, but for something called "sex by surprise."

Dec 2, 2010
Lieberman Has Power To Shut Down Websites With A Phone Call
the intel hub.com

Senator Joe Lieberman, the man behind legislation to give President Obama a kill switch for the Internet in the move towards a Chinese-style government controlled world wide web, now has the power to shut down websites with a mere phone call, as was underscored yesterday when Amazon axed Wikileaks from its servers after being pressured to do so by Lieberman’s Senate Homeland Security Committee. Amazon later called back Lieberman’s office to tell them that they had taken down the website. Amazon claimed the take down was because Wikileaks had violated its terms of service.

Dec 3, 2010
Lawyer for Assange denies warrant valid
reuters.com

Swedish police said earlier that technical problems hindering the arrest of the 39-year-old Australian had been ironed out. But Assange’s London lawyer, Mark Stephens, said no warrant valid under Swedish, European or international law had been issued.

"There is no arrest warrant against him. There was an Interpol red notice, which is not a warrant, alerting authorities to monitor his movements."

"The arrest warrant was sent back by Scotland Yard (London police headquarters) because it did not comply with the law and was defective."

Assange denies any wrongdoing and said in August he had been warned by Australian intelligence of plans to discredit his website.

The Independent newspaper said Assange had arrived in Britain in October, and had given police his contact details. It cited police sources who said they knew where Assange was staying.

Dec 3, 2010
Police close in on Assange
smh.com.au

JULIAN ASSANGE is at risk of being arrested in Britain and extradited to Sweden to face possible rape charges, at the same time as the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, added her voice to an international call to prosecute WikiLeaks. ''I absolutely condemn the placement of this information on the WikiLeaks website. It's a grossly irresponsible thing to do and an illegal thing to do,'' Ms Gillard said.

The legal situation surrounding Mr Assange, the hacker who was born in Queensland and co-founded WikiLeaks, was still unclear last night, with reports that he was in a house in south-east England waiting for British police to arrest him.

Dec 3, 2010
Troubled Wikileaks Moves to Pirate Party Domain
Torrent Freak.com

After being cut off by its nameserver provider EveryDNS, Wikileaks has moved to a domain registered by Pirate Party Switzerland. EveryDNS was forced to stop its services to Wikileaks after continued DDoS attacks. After it suffered a continued DDoS attack on its servers earlier this week the site relocated to Amazon’s cloud hosting service, but just a day or two later it was pulled following complaints from the US government.

After being cut off, Wikileaks decided to move from the .org to a .ch domain, which was registered by the Pirate Party Switzerland in June this year.

Dec 3, 2010
Wikileaks Redactions Are Cowardly
cryptome.org

Name redactions are immensely deceptive -- like knee-jerk claiming there are valid grounds for some vital secrets -- they are used to hold hostages under guise of protection. Continue to obey or your name will be revealed. Wikileaks has cowardly joined under pressure to conform to authoritative demands to be "responsible." Far better to tell the truth that the names are already loose so the victims know what the cabal of secretkeepers knows.

Assange's craven desire to be an important world player is destructive to the Wikileaks initiative to engage many participants equally with preference for documents not personal fame.

Dec 4, 2010
WikiLeaks back online, Assange close to arrest
abc.net.au

The WikiLeaks website is back online with a string of new addresses, after its previous domain name was killed. EveryDNS.net, says it terminated its services because WikiLeaks had been coming under "massive" cyber attacks.

The new Swiss address - wikileaks.ch - was put online six hours after the original site wikileaks.org was killed.

It has also launched three new addresses in the Netherlands, Germany and Finland.

An internet trace of the new domain name suggests that the site itself is still hosted in Sweden and in France.

Meanwhile, British media reports Scotland Yard could arrest the site's founder Julian Assange within days.

Dec 4, 2010
Australia to help US over Assange
smh.com.au

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may have broken Australian law and may not be welcomed back to the country if convicted, Attorney-General Robert McClelland says. "We have also indicated that we will provide every assistance to United States law-enforcement authorities."

Mr McClelland also said the Australian government had considered cancelling Mr Assange's passport, but there were "issues in respect of serving a notice of cancellation".

"More importantly, there (are) issues as to whether it would be constructive or counter-productive to the law enforcement," he said.

Assange's passport would set off alarms if presented at an airport, and Mr McClelland questioned "whether it would be counter-productive to remove the identification that would in fact trigger the law-enforcement process".

Dec 4, 2010
PayPal freezes WikiLeaks account
guardian.co.uk

PayPal has frozen WikiLeaks' account in the latest action against the whistleblower website. PayPal, owned by the auction website eBay, said the account had been frozen because it was being used for "illegal" activity.

PayPal said: "PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal acceptable use policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity."

Dec 4, 2010
WikiLeaks site's Swiss registrar dismisses pressure to take it offline
guardian.co.uk

WikiLeaks received a boost tonight when Switzerland rejected growing international calls to force the site off the internet. The site's new Swiss registrar, Switch, today said there was "no reason" why it should be forced offline, despite demands from France and the US. Switch is a non-profit registrar set up by the Swiss government for all 1.5 million Swiss .ch domain names.

Dec 5, 2010
WikiLeakS.org DNS problems
Wikileak.org (Not Wikileaks)

The WikiLeakS.org domain name is currently no longer resolving to an IP address. DynaDot,com, the California USA based Domain Name Registrar, which was successfully defended against interference in Bank Julian Baer court case does still have the WikiLieakS.org domain name registered.
Do remember this core wikileaks.org "brand" Domain Name was, incompetently, allowed to expire in the past. (see WikiLeakS.org domain name expires at Dynadot.com)

However, this Domain Name registration only points to a single, free Domain Name Service provider, EveryDNS.net, which supports lots of free, community based domain names.

Dec 5, 2010
Fresh warrant issued for Assange's arrest
abc.net.au

Julian Assange could be extradited to Sweden this weekend. A fresh arrest warrant has been issued for the 39-year-old Australian. Amazon Web Services (AWS) evicted WikiLeaks from its servers, saying in a statement "It's clear that WikiLeaks doesn't own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content."

AWS insisted its decision was not motivated by political pressure, even though the decision came after the company was grilled in a US Senate hearing by Joe Lieberman.

Senator Joe Lieberman says the US should make an example of him.

Meanwhile, Australia's Attorney-General Robert McClelland says it would be counter-productive to cancel the Australian passport of Mr Assange.

He says Australian authorities considered cancelling his passport but decided against it.

Dec 5, 2010
Australia has abandoned me: Assange
abc.net.au

Julian Assange has blasted Australia's response, saying the Federal Government has thrown away his rights in an attempt to pander to US interests. "This brings into question what does it mean to be an Australian citizen - does that mean anything at all," he wrote.

"Or are we all to be treated like David Hicks at the first possible opportunity merely so that Australian politicians and diplomats can be invited to the best US embassy cocktail parties."

Dec 5, 2010
Mass-mirroring Wikileaks
cryptome.org

Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack. In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, we need your help. If you have a unix-based server which is hosting a website on the Internet and you want to give wikileaks some of your hosting resources, you can help! We from www.wikileaks.lu have released the Wikileaks Mirroring Tools just some minutes ago. They will basically keep your mirror synced to the most up-to-date Wikileaks-mirror available out there (currently 47 in the list).

Dec 5, 2010
Mass-mirroring Wikileaks
Wikileaks.ch

Dec 5, 2010
WikiLeakS.CH - new website
Wikileak.org (Not Wikileaks)

The demise of the WikiLeakS.org website has led to the creation of a new slightly graphically enhanced website design at http://WikiLeakS.CH Yet again, PayPal appear to have suspended the Wikileaks.org donations account, as they have done in the past.

Incredibly, this website does not have any kind of Digital Certificate, not even a self signed one. Therefore there is no SSL/TLS encryption to protect sensitive personal data like names, emails and phone numbers etc from being snooped when submitting a web form.

However there are now two such web forms, one for Journalists to Register to perhaps, if they are lucky, be put on the list of "reliable and trustworthy organizations" to "collaborate" with on "future releases".

There is also now a Mirrors page. This second unencrypted web form is even more of a candidate for SSL/TLS encryption protection, since it asks for Login Details and Passwords to allow wikileaks to upload arbitarary content to mirror sites.

They are asking for:

• IP Address of your server * add ":port" if you are using a port other than 22 for SSH or 21 for FTP, IPv6 should be written with brackets [ ] like [2001:67e::44]:22

• Login we should use to access this server

• Password we should use, ONLY if we should use FTP

• Absolute path where we should upload the html data.

• Hostname you configured on your http server to serve the pages (if not www.wikileaks.org) *

How stupid does anyone have to be to simply hand such details over to wikileaks, without any encryption and even without establishing two way contact with them first?

Dec 6, 2010
WikiLeaks founder a 'high-tech terrorist': US
abc.net.au

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell says Assange should be prosecuted by US authorities. The conservative Kentucky senator says Congress should change the law if necessary to pursue the 39-year-old Australian.

"I think the man is a high-tech terrorist," he said.

Prominent Republican Newt Gingrich goes even further.

"He should be treated as an enemy combatant," he said.

Dec 6, 2010
WikiLeaks' French server goes offline
abc.net.au

WikiLeaks's main server in France has gone offline. The president of the Swiss Pirate Party, which controls the wikileaks.ch web address, said he was in the process of pointing that domain name to a different server, apparently based in Sweden. France's industry minister Eric Besson had warned on Friday that it was unacceptable to host a site that "violates the secret of diplomatic relations".

French web hosting company OVH, which owns the server, said that it had been hosting WikiLeaks since early Thursday, after a client asked for a "dedicated server with ... protection against attacks".

Dec 6, 2010
Door open for Assange to come home
abc.net.au

Attorney-General Robert McClelland says Assange, who says he has been "abandoned" by Australia, is "entitled" to come home and could also obtain consular assistance overseas. Mr McClelland has warned that the Government also has obligations to the US in the investigation of criminal matters, and it stands to reason Assange would most likely face prosecution for any alleged offences in the US.