U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors may bring charges against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange soon:
Two media reports say U.S. prosecutors are preparing or closely considering charges against the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, including its founder Julian Assange, for revealing sensitive government secrets. CNN (http://cnn.it/2pINsBT) reported Thursday that authorities are preparing to seek Assange's arrest. The Washington Post (http://wapo.st/2pJgy4k) reported prosecutors are weighing charges against the organization's members after the Obama-era Justice Department declined to do so.
Possible charges include conspiracy, theft of government property and violating the Espionage Act, the newspaper said, though any charges would need approval from high-ranking officials in the Justice Department. The move comes after WikiLeaks last month released nearly 8,000 documents that it says reveal secrets about the CIA's cyberespionage tools for breaking into computers, cellphones and even smart TVs. It previously published 250,000 State Department cables and embarrassed the U.S. military with hundreds of thousands of logs from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Previously: WikiLeaks Says It Has Obtained Trove of CIA Hacking Tools
Wikileaks and CIA Hacking Tools -- Security Firms Assess Impact as Tech Companies Offered Access
Cisco Reports Bug Disclosed in WikiLeaks' Vault 7 CIA Dump
Wikileaks Releases Code That Could Unmask CIA Hacking Operations
CIA Director Mike Pompeo Calls WikiLeaks a "Non-State Hostile Intelligence Service"
Related Stories
The anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks said Tuesday that it has obtained a vast portion of the CIA's computer hacking arsenal, and began posting the files online in a breach that may expose some of the U.S. intelligence community's most closely guarded cyber weapons.
A statement from WikiLeaks indicated that it planned to post nearly 9,000 files describing code developed in secret by the CIA to steal data from targets overseas and turn ordinary devices including cellphones, computers and even television sets into surveillance tools.
The hacking organisation made the statement as it announced a huge release of confidential documents from the CIA as part of its mysterious Year Zero series, founder Julian Assange claimed. The group said that from October 2014 the CIA was "looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks" to enable them to "engage in nearly undetectable assassinations."
takyon: WikiLeaks: Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed and (selected document) Weeping Angel (Extending) Engineering Notes. Also at NYT, USA Today, BBC, and Reuters. The Hill reports that Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu has called for an investigation... into the leak of the documents and tools.
We had two stories submitted pertaining the recent announcement that Wikileaks claimed it had received a cache of CIA hacking tools.
Security Firms Assess Impact of CIA Leak
Security firms have started assessing the impact of the CIA hacking tools exposed on Tuesday by WikiLeaks as part of the leak dubbed "Vault 7."
Files allegedly obtained from a high-security CIA network appear to show that the intelligence agency has tools for hacking everything, including mobile devices, desktop computers, routers, smart TVs and cars.
The published files also appear to show that the CIA has targeted the products of many security solutions providers, including anti-malware and secure messaging applications. The list of affected vendors includes Symantec, Kaspersky, Avira, F-Secure, Microsoft, Bitdefender, Panda Security, Trend Micro, ESET, Avast, AVG, McAfee, Comodo and G Data.
While WikiLeaks has not released any of the exploits it has obtained, an initial investigation conducted by security firms indicates that the CIA's capabilities may not be as advanced as some have suggested.
[...] WikiLeaks reported that the CIA had found a way to bypass the encryption of Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp and other secure messaging applications.
While many jumped to conclude that the agency had actually broken the encryption of these apps, WikiLeaks actually meant that gaining access to a mobile device using iOS and Android exploits could have given the CIA access to conversations, without having to break their encryption.
Source: http://www.securityweek.com/security-firms-assess-impact-cia-leak
It looks like Cisco won't be chasing up a partnership with WikiLeaks: it's combing the "Vault7" documents itself, and has turned up an IOS / IOS XE bug in more than 300 of its switch models.
The vulnerability is in the Cisco Cluster Management Protocol (CMP) in IOS and IOS XE. The protocol passes around information about switch clusters using either Telnet or SSH.
The bug is in the default configuration of affected devices, even if the user doesn't have switch clusters configured, and can be exploited over either IPv4 or IPv6.
It's a two-fold bug: first, the protocol doesn't restrict CMP-specific Telnet to local communications, instead processing commands over "any Telnet connection to an affected device"; and second, malformed CMP-specific Telnet options are incorrectly processed.
[...] Cisco's advisory doesn't tell us if it's aware of exploits using the flaw. If they are discovered, this is very substantial news because The Reg expects there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of these devices installed around the world. And all look to have been at the CIA's mercy for an unknown period of time.
-- submitted from IRC
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard. Twice.
Now, according to BBC, Wikileaks has released another incredible piece of [the CIA] arsenal. Wikileaks reportedly released the code that the CIA uses to disguise the origins of a computer virus as a part of Vault 7.
These hacking tools reportedly include decoy languages like Russian to disguise the national origins of the cyber attack or malware. The release may disrupt the CIA's current operations and reveal previous cyber operations.
Source: https://milo.yiannopoulos.net/2017/04/wikileaks-disrupt-cia/
Also at Ars Technica
The current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, has described WikiLeaks as a "non-state hostile intelligence service":
Russian military intelligence used Wikileaks to distribute hacked material during the US election, he added. Earlier this month Wikileaks published details of what it said were CIA hacking tools. The FBI and CIA have launched a criminal investigation into the leak.
"WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service," Mr Pompeo said, speaking at a Washington think tank. "It overwhelmingly focuses on the US, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organisations," he added.
Wikileaks responded by posting a screenshot of a tweet sent by Mr Pompeo last July, in which the then member of the House of Representatives referred to material contained in the Wikileaks release of Democratic party emails. The tweet has since been deleted.
Does that make the CIA a "state hostile intelligence service"?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:44AM (28 children)
So...it turns out that Assange was right: The US does want to prosecute him. Which makes it likely that there was some understanding between the US and the EU about extraditing him, if only he would leave that pesky embassy.
Of course, the fact the Assange himself didn't steal any documents, that his publication of those documents happened outside the US, that he has no obligation whatsoever to follow US law - those pesky details are always ignored by US prosecutors and courts. Jurisdiction is wimps. /s
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @08:45AM (18 children)
So...it turns out that Assange was right: The US does want to prosecute him.
It sounds like the current administration wants to prosecute him for his latest document releases. It's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy if he keeps releasing the documents of many governments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:36AM (2 children)
You forgot to bring up rape. The department down the hall working the green site is going to eat our metrics.
He deserves to be prosecuted for WikiLeaks on completely unrelated charges because of a very shaky rape allegation. Plus, internet tough guys will always help out by calling anybody who thinks a rape allegation could possibly be invented by a party not even involved in the act a misogynist. Therefore, he's guilty of something, WikiLeaks is something, so he should be taken to a proper jail for torture and sexual humiliation* Q.E.D.
* I don't see anybody's quite made this connection from Assange being a rapist to US prison rape on a conscious level yet, but it appears to be very effective on a subconscious level. Humans are ever gluttons for eye-for-an-eye style "justice." Just a few more decades now and they'll finish terraforming the planet for us, finally after 66 million years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:14PM (1 child)
I was only commenting on bradley13's post.
The US government does not want to prosecute Assange for rape.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:29PM
Of course not. But if you don't mention the rape part, you won't get public support. Humans aren't rational, so you can't use logic or rationality to manipulate them.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @11:38AM (7 children)
Now that Cheeto Mussolini is in office, he has no use for wikileaks anymore, so he's moving to eliminate that risk to his secrets. That's the problem with being a useful idiot, when your usefulness runs out, so does your life. Now, lets see how long it takes to blame this on Clinton... Derpstate perhaps?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:20PM (6 children)
King Orange Ferret Pelt will denounce anything wikileaks says about him, and his followers & the US Congress will not care. "Fake News" is now the official sign to staple to your ass when you are ostriching* to avoid reality.
* yes, I verbed ostrich
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:03PM (5 children)
You two sound like a couple of salty nignogs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @02:30PM
And you routinely sound like a racist piece of crap, point?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:37PM (1 child)
People acting like that literally got Trump elected by associating with the opposition. I warned them all it was happening a year ago but they just continued on spewing their drivel... so dumb. I joke sometimes that they are a false flag operation being paid by Trump somehow.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:04PM
They are Russians, it is in their own interest! Gotta secure their spot in the global economy once oil collapses...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:20PM
Looks like they managed to trigger the white nigger. Then again, it doesn't take much to trigger a lying degenerate lowlife such as yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @01:03AM
Nignog? Interesting. My brother and I used to use that phrase way back as a silly term to refer to each other when trying to be annoying. I suppose it rhymes and is generic enough but still... And yes, we meant it as a reference to niggers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:38PM (6 children)
The obama admin was going to do it too. They just couldn't find a way to make it seem different than prosecuting any other journalist that accepts dead drop sources.*
This administration just plain doesn't care how it looks and just wants to do it anyway.
*Which is what wikileaks is. If you looked at what they post they just don't focus on the US, but they do have a english speaking bias due to only having english speakers on staff. This is why chinese and russian secrets are not very prominent on their site. Those two countries may also have a better method of keeping secrets as well.
A lot of the leaked stuff on the us is from low level private(aka civilian) contractors having access to the information and deciding it's their moral imperative to leak it.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:26PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Saturday April 22 2017, @11:19PM (4 children)
> The obama admin was going to do it too. They just couldn't find a way to make it seem different than prosecuting any other journalist that accepts dead drop sources.
I don't know the reason why Assange wasn't charged by the U.S. before, although I doubt that wanting to make it look different from the Obama administration's prosecution of other journalists was the reason. From a search for "war on journalism":
With Fox’s Rosen, the administration got an actual warrant to read his email and contends that he has committed crimes by pursuing and publishing a story about North Korea, even though the story apparently doesn’t include any classified information per se. Rosen hasn’t been legally charged as of yet, but as Glenn Greenwald notes, the accusations against Rosen parallel government charges against WikiLeaks honcho Julian Assange.
-- http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/22/obama-s-war-on-journalism-an-unconstitutional-act.html [thedailybeast.com]
[...] when international pressure moved the Yemeni government to finally consider pardoning Shaye, President Obama personally intervened, using a phone call with Yemen’s leader to halt the journalist’s release.
-- https://www.salon.com/2013/06/28/obamas_war_on_journalism/ [salon.com]
[...] the Espionage Act, approved in 1917 during the hysteria of World War I, was used three times before President Obama took office in 2009 -- and six times during his presidency.
-- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kennedy/calling-out-obama-for-his_b_1303783.html [huffingtonpost.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @02:29AM (3 children)
I'm pretty sure none of your examples are of journalists using dead drops.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday April 23 2017, @05:43AM (2 children)
Perhaps not: I only meant them to show the Obama administration's general eagerness to have journalists punished. Care to comment on the significance of the use of a dead drop, as compared to other ways of receiving information from an anonymous source--or indeed, of gathering information in general?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @12:21AM (1 child)
Its about as relevant as the fact that the Obama DoJ didn't charge any of those journalists either.
Look, I'm not defending spying on reporters. But using false equivalencies only diminishes the moral high ground.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday April 24 2017, @02:08AM
Thanks for the correction. Sorry for my sloppiness.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:32PM
One problem is that it has been years and a couple of big leaks since Assange started to claim that the U.S. was trying to extradite him. It's not impossible that he or one of his people did commit a crime during that time (or something the DoJ wants to convince us to be a crime).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:44PM (1 child)
He's not even a US citizen. It's like the government of China decided to prosecute US citizens, located in the US, for showing Ai Weiwei's art on a website.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:22PM
When you start stealing state secrets, you dont need to be a resident to be committing a crime, and face extradition.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:14PM (4 children)
There have been at various times congressmen calling for him to be shot, and the UK has said that they will violate diplomatic protocols if Assange tries to leave that embassy, and the Swedish authorities have consistently refused to even talk to him about their alleged criminal case without having him in physical custody. That was among the evidence Assange's defenders cited that convinced a UN panel that he was being held under house arrest illegally.
And for those laboring under the delusion that the Clinton administration would never have done such a thing, well, consider that Clinton strategist Bob Beckel said "a dead guy can't leak stuff [twitter.com]".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:25PM (3 children)
And for those laboring under the delusion that the Clinton administration would never have done such a thing, well, consider that Clinton strategist Bob Beckel said "a dead guy can't leak stuff".
Hey, thanks for providing an example of wikileaks straight-up lying.
Its not the first time, but its a really straight-forward case.
Bob Beckel was never a clinton strategist. He's just some dumbass on tv in 2010.
Not only was that fact mentioned within minutes in the response to wikileaks's own tweet, but snopes looked into it too:
http://www.snopes.com/bob-beckel-julian-assange/ [snopes.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:33PM (2 children)
Snopes is a known biased source! They have no credibility! #fakenews #MAGA
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:31PM (1 child)
Hi, Donald! Shouldn't you be running the country right now?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @07:52AM
Please, stop giving him ideas.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:05PM
So...it turns out that Assange was right: The US does want to prosecute him.
Charges come before extradition, and are public record. I'd say this indicates the opposite: The US didn't want to prosecute but now they might.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:50AM (7 children)
Simply because I think he's an asshole, but like many assholes I know I cannot ethically justify putting him in jail unless I was willing to do it my self and of the many assholes in my life I have yet to kidnap and imprison even one yet.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @08:41AM (2 children)
So "What would AC do?" is a thing now?
(Score: 1) by alcamtar on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:39AM (1 child)
Or "What would AC-hole do?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:22PM
Shouldn't that be A-holeC?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @10:56AM
I guess" so what would AC-hole do" is a thing since you are all talking about it
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday April 22 2017, @12:37PM (2 children)
Is Assange really an asshole? What about Kim Dotcom? Or is it just easier to defend them to skeptics if you use this tired qualifier?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:07PM
I think they're both assholes. It's not illegal to be an asshole, though.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday April 24 2017, @02:41PM
Everyone is an asshole if you pay attention closely enough and are looking for evidence to support your conclusion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @01:22PM
The quote at the bottom of the page just read: "Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving from where you left them to where you can't find them."
How extremely appropriate! :-D
Just that in this case, the papers were indeed found ....
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:54PM (2 children)
Assange should have made the running of the site anonymous too. His ego may cost him his freedom/life.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @10:15PM
Wikileaks is more than just the site.
Their staff actually helped snowden leave china, in person. [vogue.com]
Besides, keeping the site up while remaining anonymous would be impossible. Even if it weren't public knowledge the various intelligence agencies would have figured it out anyway. Better to be public so any actions taken against you are public too.
N.B. I think assange is an ego-centric jerkoff, this isn't a defense of him personally.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @03:42PM
It's a global NAZI check, whether you can tell people the emperor has no clothes using your own identity. Obviously you can't nowadays and we're run by NAZIS.
Nevermind Assange, look at what he's showing you!