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posted by martyb on Monday October 17 2016, @07:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the where's-the-nearest-Starbucks? dept.

Multiple sources reporting:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37680411
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2016/10/17/wikileaks-says-assanges-internet-link-was-severed-by-state-party.html
http://time.com/4532984/wikileaks-julian-assange-theories/

Wikileaks has announced that Julian Assange's internet access had been intentionally severed by a state actor. I would assume this means they disrupted a VPN connection he had rather than just cutting all internet access to the Ecuadorian Embassy, but again details are limited.

The announcement of disruption was also preceded by multiple strange tweets of random numbers (likely crypto keys) that appear to be part of a dead man system activated by the disruption.

takyon: The full tweet states "Julian Assange's internet link has been intentionally severed by a state party. We have activated the appropriate contingency plans." Wikileaks recently released Part 9 of the Podesta Emails. Also at CNET and Ars Technica.

Update: Wikileaks says: "We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange's internet access Saturday, 5pm GMT, shortly after publication of Clinton's Goldman Sachs speechs."

Perhaps the embassy's perennial guest has finally overstayed his welcome?


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  • (Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @07:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @07:41PM (#415334)

    This is current year. Everyone has internet on a mobile phone.

    Assange is living in the middle of London. There is mobile coverage.

    The guy has no excuse not to have multiple burner phones and VPN servers.

    Even I have four burner phones and two VPN servers. And I am lowly AC.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @07:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @07:44PM (#415336)

    Idiot moron!

    EMF jammers exist and if someone is really serious about cutting another person's internet access then of course they will add one of those.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @07:52PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @07:52PM (#415348)

      And take out the surrounding city block. Most people don't care about one person in an embassy, but cut their ability to use Pokemon Go and Facebook and there will be riots in the street.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @07:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @07:56PM (#415350)

      What part of "middle of London" is confusing you?

      Here, have a map to see what you'll be jamming. https://goo.gl/maps/MVmPWJEYetM2 [goo.gl]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @08:00PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @08:00PM (#415354)

        I understand your point, but would also add that jammers have undoubtedly been improved over the years and can be selective about their radius. If Ecuador is complicity with cutting off his internet they could jam him from the next room! However, it is also quite likely that the telcos were served with what amounts to national security letters and have simply disabled any service he might get.

        Or he's dead.

        Either way, the OP is stupid to think that the people behind this would not account for a burner phone....

        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 17 2016, @08:08PM

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday October 17 2016, @08:08PM (#415359) Journal

          Either way, the OP is stupid to think that the people behind this would not account for a burner phone....

          For all we know, the shutoff was a ham-fisted move by Ecuador (or not by Ecuador), and Assange is already back online (note "the appropriate contingency plans"). Or never was offline. Or there was a technical issue.

          We can't take a Wikileaks Twitter account's word as gospel. But I'm interested to hear more.

          --
          [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
          • (Score: 2) by Dunbal on Monday October 17 2016, @08:47PM

            by Dunbal (3515) on Monday October 17 2016, @08:47PM (#415394)

            For all we know, the shutoff was a ham-fisted move by Ecuador

            The ONLY place I've seen this mentioned is soylentnews...

            • (Score: 2) by Dunbal on Monday October 17 2016, @08:57PM

              by Dunbal (3515) on Monday October 17 2016, @08:57PM (#415404)

              Scratch that - was looking in the wrong place.

            • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 17 2016, @08:57PM

              by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday October 17 2016, @08:57PM (#415406) Journal

              Explain? You mean everywhere else has gone full infowars conspiracytard and assumed the NWO is cracking down?

              Small governments aren't known for having great technical prowess or making truly rational decisions. Whatever happened to Assange, it clearly has had little or no effect on the organization's ability to get those emails out. They probably learned to make lots of backups after Daniel Domscheit-Berg [wikipedia.org] screwed the org over and deleted some documents.

              --
              [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
          • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 18 2016, @01:54AM

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 18 2016, @01:54AM (#415491) Journal

            I don't know anything about anything - but the fact that Assange is not mobile may be a factor in cutting his internet access. If most of our cell phones get bad signals, we can walk across the street, or find a better spot in the yard. We have mobility on our side. On a really bad day, I can drive a couple miles up or down the road, and find a better signal. Or, I can drive into town. Cellular service really is that bad around here.

            But, if Assange steps outside the embassy, the constabulary will whisk him up, and he will go directly to jail, he will not collect $200, and there is no 'get out of jail free' card in this game.

            Stationary targets are much easier to hit than moving targets.

            • (Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Tuesday October 18 2016, @04:07AM

              by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday October 18 2016, @04:07AM (#415532) Journal

              That's the trick: get him on the balcony when he's trying to get 2 bars.

              --
              [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 18 2016, @04:12AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 18 2016, @04:12AM (#415533)

                That is the saddest and funniest sounding arrest :)

              • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 18 2016, @06:26AM

                by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 18 2016, @06:26AM (#415561) Journal

                He did cancel his balcony press release. He likes theater and drama, and made some allusions that might be interpreted as an assassination attempt. If the man spoke more plainly, he'd make more sense. Maybe.

          • (Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday October 18 2016, @02:51AM

            by driverless (4770) on Tuesday October 18 2016, @02:51AM (#415514)

            For all we know, the shutoff was a ham-fisted move by Ecuador (or not by Ecuador)

            Either that or Ecuador has just found out that a £14.99/month Plusnet account with bundled Huawei router isn't really enough to run an embassy off. Sheesh, only Assange could turn an internet outage into a global news event.

        • (Score: 4, Funny) by isostatic on Monday October 17 2016, @08:57PM

          by isostatic (365) on Monday October 17 2016, @08:57PM (#415403) Journal

          If Ecuador wanted to stop his internet traffic they could simply kick him out the door.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @09:23PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @09:23PM (#415424)

      They wouldn't need to use a jammer, per se. The government could simply require the cell companies to refuse service. Even if he could get a supply of cell phones to change to whenever his current account is blocked, I don't think it would take more than a few calls for the British authorities to ID the next phone and disable access for it. If they didn't want to bother the cell phone companies, they could use a modified StingRay device. I'm pretty sure that they could order one that could be used to disable specific phones. It would surprise me a little if they don't have this already.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jdavidb on Monday October 17 2016, @07:45PM

    by jdavidb (5690) on Monday October 17 2016, @07:45PM (#415340) Homepage Journal

    The guy has no excuse not to have multiple burner phones and VPN servers.

    Right, it's easy for him to just step out to walmart for an extra phone.

    --
    ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @07:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @07:48PM (#415344)

      He can't possibly be doing his own shopping. The same people who shop for his food can shop for his phones.

      • (Score: 2) by jdavidb on Monday October 17 2016, @07:52PM

        by jdavidb (5690) on Monday October 17 2016, @07:52PM (#415349) Homepage Journal

        He can't possibly be doing his own shopping

        That was my point.

        The same people who shop for his food can shop for his phones.

        And the same people who have cut off his internet are the same people who are hosting him, and therefore they are the same people who have the power to decide what he is and isn't allowed to have brought to him.

        --
        ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @07:59PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @07:59PM (#415352)

          You're implying the Ecuadorian government cut off his internet but do you have any proof?

          • (Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Monday October 17 2016, @08:52PM

            by Francis (5544) on Monday October 17 2016, @08:52PM (#415398)

            That's the last link in the summary. Wikileaks is confirming that the embassy cut his access, not anybody else.

            I'm not sure why they did that as they knew what he was doing previously.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @09:00PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @09:00PM (#415408)

              Summary, who reads the summary, or the headline?

          • (Score: 2) by jdavidb on Monday October 17 2016, @09:12PM

            by jdavidb (5690) on Monday October 17 2016, @09:12PM (#415417) Homepage Journal

            You're implying the Ecuadorian government cut off his internet but do you have any proof?

            Proof by process of elimination? /shrug

            --
            ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
  • (Score: 2) by jdavidb on Monday October 17 2016, @07:45PM

    by jdavidb (5690) on Monday October 17 2016, @07:45PM (#415341) Homepage Journal
    Is it possible he's dead?
    --
    ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 17 2016, @08:27PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 17 2016, @08:27PM (#415377) Journal

      Possible? Yes. Likely? I doubt.

      If Julian was dead in the embassy, why would they try to conceal it?

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 2) by Username on Monday October 17 2016, @08:13PM

    by Username (4557) on Monday October 17 2016, @08:13PM (#415364)

    Not sure if burner phones have data now, but dialup over voice circuits is the hardest form to block, or capture. Might run out of minutes trying to RX/TX files in the gigabit range over dialup though.

    PS: whoever’s the dick that keeps moding posts they disagree with as troll, knock it off. Pretty sure OP honestly believes what he said and isn’t trying to troll. Assange should have multiple means to continue to do his work. Even if it is carrier pigeons with sd cards.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @08:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @08:21PM (#415371)
    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Monday October 17 2016, @11:58PM

      by edIII (791) on Monday October 17 2016, @11:58PM (#415465)

      Not sure if burner phones have data now, but dialup over voice circuits is the hardest form to block, or capture. Might run out of minutes trying to RX/TX files in the gigabit range over dialup though.

      That doesn't seem correct at all :)

      A 56Kb modem can only do ~200MB per day in data transfer at full rate the entire time. You would need to bond many together to have a reasonable amount of bandwidth to work with. Upstream is still hampered around 33.6Kb, even with v90.

      Blocking it is hilariously simple. Just pick up the line and ask Assange, "Are you on the Internet!? I told you to take out the trash first!". The embassy could introduce some static noise and fuck it all up, but then again, is it VoIP? There is a reason why t38 fax support sucks ass, and that we've pretty much given up on sending faxes over the Internet (FoIP). I've never seen it work properly and reliably either.

      VoIP uses special codecs and it is simply not an analog circuit. It can be so problematic that hold music is affected, as g729 is a speech conjugate algorithm that works better with speech than it does rhythm and beats.

      It's just plain difficult to establish an analog connection over VoIP equipment. Any point along the way that doesn't perfectly recreate the analog signal will fuck it up, and that can be done with a single transcoding event.

      Capturing them? Easy. Trivial. Millions per day.

      It's an analog voice circuit. Here in the U.S, Verisign makes billions operating what they call "Mediation switches" which do exactly that; Capture analog voice traffic in bulk for later surveillance.

      That traffic is really just a different Layer 1 than is typically used, but its Layer 2 looks awfully darn familiar, and the Layer 3 is still the same TCP stack that most of us use. Faxes have long been traditionally considered secure in corporations, but that is so laughably stupid that only c-suites keep repeating it. The IT departments just roll their eyes when they hear a fax is required for "security".

      A fax is practically no different than a modem transmitting data packets between another modem, and they can be captured and replayed in real time. I've never even heard of an endpoint-to-endpoint encrypted fax setup, but I've heard plenty of times how a corporate fax line was penetrated and that thousands of confidential documents were intercepted.

      To give you an idea of just how stupid fax security was, I could've penetrated a Forbes 400 company from their telephone CO out on the street. There is a scene in the movie Sneakers where they're under the street intercepting the emergency circuits at a bank. Same thing. Almost every corporation was vulnerable at the dmarc, and 66-blocks were effective "keys to the kingdom" if there ever were any.

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
      • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday October 18 2016, @01:03AM

        by butthurt (6141) on Tuesday October 18 2016, @01:03AM (#415476) Journal

        Am I missing something? 60 seconds/minute *60 minutes/hour *24 hours/day *56000 bits/second /8 bits/byte /1024 bytes/kB /1024 kB/MB = 576.8 MB/day

        200 MB/day works out to 19418 bits/second.

        Even 200 MB/day of uncompressed plain text is far more than anyone can read or write. With a mastery of meditation--or under sufficient sedation--one might have the patience to even view a few Web pages.

        • (Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday October 18 2016, @01:29AM

          by edIII (791) on Tuesday October 18 2016, @01:29AM (#415484)

          No, I missed the difference between bits and bytes. That 200MB mark is what I was effectively pushing through a 56K modem on a moderately crappy connection 17k ft from the CO. It may have been suboptimal speeds :) (although never underestimate the speed of 4GB hard drives doing 60mph between a data center and a house)

          Even still, 576.8 MB is not the much. While it still may be more than what can be read or written by a person, that doesn't mean it's suitable for data transfers, or that it can suffer the overhead of encryption and document formatting. Not with recent data, that tends to be pretty bloated.

          With a mastery of meditation--or under sufficient sedation--one might have the patience to even view a few Web pages.

          Some of us older guys are laughing quite a bit right now. The "Internet" used to be pretty slow, and protocols that could let you view the data while you downloaded it were cutting edge and pretty cool.

          Download speeds used to be slow enough that you needed to pace yourself viewing porn. So you could last till the bottom of the image, or perhaps even go through a couple of them in "real time". The funniest pranks I've ever heard of was replacing a girls pussy with a big ol' dick or Bozo the Clown, as the dude was wanking furiously for a few minutes till the "big reveal". Older BBS's had a sense of humour.

          Porn in ye olden times was an adventure where you earned the reward. Dudes these days with the Internet and 40 thumbnails loading in less than a second are so spoiled :)

          --
          Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
          • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday October 19 2016, @04:18PM

            by Bot (3902) on Wednesday October 19 2016, @04:18PM (#416197) Journal

            > although never underestimate the speed of 4GB hard drives doing 60mph

            The speed is therefore 60mph. :)

            --
            Account abandoned.
        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 18 2016, @01:38AM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 18 2016, @01:38AM (#415486) Journal

          The math doesn't tell the whole story. Years ago, when all I had was dialup in Outback Nowhere, downloading an ISO of a few hundred megabytes might take all week. We didn't have bittorrent, there were just FTP and browser downloaders, and a couple download managers. You got about half the ISO, and got a message that the file was corrupt, do you want to start over. FTP was far more reliable than any other choice of downloaders, but not all sites supported FTP.

          Long story short, dial up sucked the llama's ass.

          • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday October 18 2016, @02:32AM

            by butthurt (6141) on Tuesday October 18 2016, @02:32AM (#415503) Journal

            Rsync was released in 1996; for those who had a shell account it could make such things relatively painless.

            https://groups.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=msg/comp.os.linux.announce/tZE1qtTcQaU/IF8GhGQ_uTsJ [google.com]

            Aside from that, there were (are) ways of resuming an interrupted download, or failing that, breaking a file into smaller files, to be combined after they all arrived.

            zipsplit - split a zipfile into smaller zipfiles
            [...]
            -n size
                    Make zip files no larger than "size" (default = 36000).

            --
            http://www.info-zip.org/mans/zipsplit.html [info-zip.org]

            split — split a file into pieces
            [...]
            -b, --bytes=SIZE
                    put SIZE bytes per output file

            -- https://www.mankier.com/1/split [mankier.com]

            ZMODEM supports enormous block sizes and, following a communication failure, allows transfers to resume from where they stopped.

            -- https://www.techopedia.com/definition/1805/zmodem [techopedia.com]

            The NcFTP client can reget files which have only partially downloaded.

            -- http://www.linuxmisc.com/3-solaris/8399fba0726d9e39.htm [linuxmisc.com]

            One fellow, however, had difficulty downloading such an FTP client:

            Please, tell me where I may get an FTP client for
            Windows 3.11, which has "restart" or "reget" option. I was
            given a PPP connection (for free) from George Soros'
            International Scientific Foundation (ISF, Kiev Branch). But
            their name server is overrun by users' calls during most of
            the day and I can access it only from 01.00 to 07.00.
            Generally, there is only 300-800 bps speed of transfer,
            which makes files larger then 500k almost unaccessible for
            me. Last night I tried to pull out a 1.8M file from the USA.
            That was very stupid. I went around my PC all night long
            like a hungry jakal around a dying elephant but, alas. The
            transfer was aborted at around 08.00 after I got a 0.7M
            portion. Well, someone's surfing -- someone's "snailing".

            :-(

                      I found a utility from ftp.download.com, which can
            retrieve files in several sessions ("GetRight" shareware)
            but again, it is too large for me (1.140M zip) and it
            requires Windows95. I also tried to download an evaluation
            copy of WS_FTP from Ipswitch.com (both "Profesional" and
            "Limited Edition") but all transfers (6 attempts) were
            aborted after approx. 100K had been done.

            I shall appreciate it highly if somebody tell me where I can
            get a "reget" (not very large and for Windows3.11).

            -- https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/cytometry/1997-March/006699.html [purdue.edu]

            • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 18 2016, @02:44AM

              by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 18 2016, @02:44AM (#415509) Journal

              Informative, but I needed you to tell me this over 20 years ago. ;^)

              Back then, FTP was a "new" technology to me. Not to the computing world, but to me. I certainly can't tell you which client I was using then, but it could and would fail to resume. The resume feature was there, it simply failed as often as not. And, at that time, I had no idea what rsync was. My "support" consisted of people who had relative "broadband", trying to help some country hick out. They didn't seem to understand my problems, and I certainly didn't understand how they managed to download the entire internet on a daily basis.

      • (Score: 2) by Username on Tuesday October 18 2016, @02:26AM

        by Username (4557) on Tuesday October 18 2016, @02:26AM (#415501)

        I was thinking more about the inception level of encapsulation going on. Even if it’s recorded they still need to convert the analog signal to digital through some kinda virtual modem or something. Probably doable, yeah, but far harder and tedious than sending an already digital capture to a server farm to crack. Then finding it through all the other voice data, and figuring out it’s not just a fax of some guys asscheeks but assange’s secret 56k line. They would most likely be looking for already digital data.

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Monday October 17 2016, @08:23PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 17 2016, @08:23PM (#415372) Journal

    > Even I have four burner phones . . .

    Don't you think it dangerous to have that many Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones?

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @08:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @08:25PM (#415373)

      I believe AC said "burner" not "exploding" . . .

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @08:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @08:46PM (#415393)

        Sounds like a terrorist either way.

    • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday October 17 2016, @09:37PM

      by MostCynical (2589) on Monday October 17 2016, @09:37PM (#415431) Journal

      They are not likely to go 'bang' at the same time...

      --
      "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday October 18 2016, @07:22AM

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 18 2016, @07:22AM (#415572) Journal

    This is current year. Everyone has internet on a mobile phone.

    I don't have a need for a smart phone - so I don't own one. My internet arrives via a fibre optic cable. Don't make assumptions about what other people have or have not.

    Assange is living in the middle of London. There is mobile coverage.

    And the mobile coverage is controlled and monitored by whom? Oh, that's right, possibly the same 'state actor' that has just disrupted his VPN.

    The guy has no excuse not to have multiple burner phones and VPN servers.

    The burner phones are useless once they pinpoint where the phone is - which will not take GCHQ very long. See also my comment about who controls the mobile network. GCHQ will, I suspect, have been monitoring his communications since day 1, and I imagine they have it pretty well covered by now. He might have a billion VPN server accounts, but there are a limited number of connections in to and out of the Embassy. If he cannot connect to his VPN server - which is exactly what is currently happening - then it doesn't really matter how many he might have.

    And I am lowly AC.

    You can wear the AC badge with pride, but that doesn't excuse you from thinking the problem through.