WikiLeaks Was Launched With Documents Intercepted From Tor

WikiLeaks Was Launched With Documents Intercepted From Tor

cryptogon.com

By necessity, however, the last node through which traffic passes has to decrypt the communication before delivering it to its final destination. Someone operating that exit node can therefore read the traffic passing through this server.

According to The New Yorker, “millions of secret transmissions passed through” the node the WikiLeaks activist operated — believed to be an exit node. The data included sensitive information of foreign governments.

The activist believed the data was being siphoned from computers around the world by hackers who appeared to be in China and who were

(visit the link for the full news article)

I've always wondered how sites like Wikileaks obtained information. A thought occurred, either people in high up places must really hate who they are working for or hackers were some how stealing information then publishing the information on the internet.

I have to admit, I have to admire the method used and how someone was able to exploit it. At the same time concerned about how secure one could be if they were able to get the type of information from secretive sources, where does that leave me? =0


cryptogon.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Wikileaks denies Tor hacker eavesdropping gave site its start

Wired has a beatup on WL&Tor,with no new info,spinning "our" 2006 investigation into Chinese spying. Don't be fooled.

The imputation is incorrect. The facts concern a 2006 investigation into Chinese espionage one of our contacts were involved in. Somewhere between none and handful of those documents were ever released on WikiLeaks. Non-government targets of the Chinese espionage, such as Tibetan associations were informed (by us).

Traffic passing through the Tor (The Onion Router) anonymizing network is encrypted until it reaches the point when it leaves the network, where it is decrypted and forwarded to its final destination. Traffic leaving at a particular exit node can always be monitored, a point which Tor has always emphasised. This monitoring may be a criminal offence, depending on where it takes place, and is certainly ethically questionable. Anyone using Tor should use SSH, SSL, or a VPN connection to encrypt traffic because Tor is only good for anonymity - certainly not end-to-end encryption. Users have no control over which exit nodes will be used, still less on the path traffic takes through the network, which is random by design.

There is thorough coverage of Tor's strengths and weaknesses in This thread

secundus versus

Somehow it makes sense to me that WikiLeaks will be attacked by the media (ie. government) as being a Chinese or foreign plot to expose government secrets under the guise of a public service.

All their other attacks have failed, so their best and most desperate option is to discredit WikiLeaks - to the point when even we at ATS will group it in the same category as Scorcha Faal.

Is this the beginning of a concerted MSM anti-WikiLeaks campaign?

I was under the impression that individual packets of data pinged around the tor network and found an exit server, so that a single internet session or the sending of a large document would involve the use of many of the exit servers?

A packet is something like 1,000 bytes right? Intercepting packets of that size is pretty useless, but if all of those packets were intercepted then of course you would have the whole document.