Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Wikileaks accidentally leaks its own cache

  Things have come full circle: Julian Assange's Wikileaks has apparently accidentally leaked its own cache onto the internet. Though the organization has been slowly releasing information from its approximately 250,000 leaked government cables over the past nine months, these publications had important information redacted, including the names of informants and sources. The unredacted, encrypted cache, reportedly available as a 1.73 GB file named "cables.csv," is password protected, but the password has been leaked. Assange reportedly gave the password to an "external contact" to view the files.  German newspaper Der Freitag claims to have received the password, which has possibly been published online, and have viewed the file. They claim the cables include the names of suspected informants in Iran, Jordan, Iran, and Afghanistan. So if this information, along with the password, is floating around online, it's entirely possible that the leaders of these countries will shortly be able to view the names of their informant citizens.
You would think that a man who hacks and leaks professionally would be a bit more wary of being hacked and leaked.
 

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