Wikileaks Just Released A Massive 'Insurance' File That No One Can Open

[tangent4ronpaul]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/wikile...222633306.html

Anti-secrecy organization Wikileaks just released a treasure trove of files that, at least for now, you can't read.

The group, which has been assisting ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden after he leaked top-secret documents to the media, posted links for about 400 gigabytes of files on their Facebook page Saturday, and asked their fans to download and mirror them elsewhere.

Here's the cryptic post:

WikiLeaks releases encrypted versions of upcoming publication data ("insurance") from time to time to nullify attempts at prior restraint.

Please mirror:
WikiLeaks insurance 20130815-A: 3.6Gb http://wlstorage.net/torrent/wlinsur...aes256.torrent
B: 49Gb http://wlstorage.net/torrent/wlinsur...aes256.torrent
C: 349GB http://wlstorage.net/torrent/wlinsur...aes256.torrent


The organization posted the same message about its "insurance" files to Twitter.

You can download the files via torrent but since they are encrypted — and Wikileaks has not yet provided the key — you won't be able to open them.

We can garner at least one thing of note from the file names alone: They probably have a very high level of encryption. The end of the files, "aes256," likely stands for Advanced Encryption Standard-256 bits.

It's a way of locking up your files that even the NSA has approved for use on top secret data.

What's in the files is anyone's guess for now, but there's already plenty of speculation.

-t

[MoneyWhereMyMouthIs2]

Two things, which I did not come up with, myself.

One... the people who leaked the info likely wanted it released, so that sounds somewhat against what wikileaks is supposed to stand for.

Two... If various intelligence agencies believe the release of the information will be harmful to the US, wikileaks people may find that they have entirely new groups of people trying to kill them so the information does get released.

[tangent4ronpaul]

Bradley Manning should be sentenced Tuesday. The judge in the case now has about 400 GB worth of reasons to not impose the maximum sentence.

There are also others that this is protecting...

-t

[Carson]

Is this the Kraken?

[devil21]

Is this the same file that they released a couple years ago? This isn't the first time Wikileaks has put out some gigantic "insurance" file that no one can crack. Last time they said if Assange was arrested that the key would be released.

[pcosmar]

Is this the same file that they released a couple years ago? This isn't the first time Wikileaks has put out some gigantic "insurance" file that no one can crack. Last time they said if Assange was arrested that the key would be released.

This is much larger,,as I remember.

the other files are timed release.

I was wondering if this had something to do with Greenwalds partner being arrested.

[anaconda]

the people who leaked the info likely wanted it released, so that sounds somewhat against what wikileaks is supposed to stand for.

I thought this is exactly what wikileaks stood for. What is your take on their mission statement?

[Zippyjuan]

They have been posting "insurance files" from time to time. Article from 2010: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...nsurance-file/

In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks’ recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled “insurance.”

The huge file, posted on the Afghan War page at the WikiLeaks site, is 1.4 GB and is encrypted with AES256. The file’s size dwarfs the size of all the other files on the page combined. The file has also been posted on a torrent download site.

WikiLeaks, on Sunday, posted several files containing the 77,000 Afghan war documents in a single “dump” file and in several other files containing versions of the documents in various searchable formats.

Cryptome, a separate secret-spilling site, has speculated that the new file added days later may have been posted as insurance in case something happens to the WikiLeaks website or to the organization’s founder, Julian Assange. In either scenario, WikiLeaks volunteers, under a prearranged agreement with Assange, could send out a password or passphrase to allow anyone who has downloaded the file to open it.

It’s not known what the file contains but it could include the balance of data that U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning claimed to have leaked to Assange before he was arrested in May.


In chats with former hacker Adrian Lamo, Manning disclosed that he had provided Assange with a different war log cache than the one that WikiLeaks already published. This one was said to contain 500,000 events from the Iraq War between 2004 and 2009. WikiLeaks has never commented on whether it received that cache.

Additionally, Manning said he sent Assange video showing a deadly 2009 U.S. firefight near the Garani village in Afghanistan that local authorities say killed 100 civilians, most of them children, as well as 260,000 U.S. State Department cables.

Manning never mentioned leaking the Afghan War log to WikiLeaks in his chats with Lamo, but Defense Department officials told The Wall Street Journal that investigators had found evidence on Manning’s Army computer that tied him to that leak.

The earlier one got cracked. Or maybe not. The password was found.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/wikile...-exposed/56553

The Wikileaks 'insurance file', a highly-encrypted file released onto the web earlier this year by the whistle-blowing organisation, has been decrypted.

The contents contain the entire cache of U.S. diplomatic cables, without redaction or editing.

The unredacted cables, which were not edited or blacked out like previous releases, could expose hundreds of sources of intelligence and put their safety at risk.

According to Der Spiegel, a series of conflicts between founder Julian Assange and former spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg, led to the release of the password that protected the 'insurance file' that Wikileaks had circulated earlier this year.

It is believed that Assange had left the password to the insurance file on a secure Wikileaks server, to allow a trusted external contact to examine the cables.

Domscheit-Berg, one of Assange's greatest critics, left Wikileaks in September 2010. When he left, he took the contents of the secure server -- the original diplomatic cable cache, and the password -- with him.

Domscheit-Berg returned to Wikileaks towards the end of 2010, as Wikileaks supporters released the original cables in a 256-AES encrypted format -- not knowing the content of the data.

It is understood that the password was released earlier this year, without realising it would unlock the original, unredacted files of the U.S. diplomatic cable release, and was left undetected for several months.

OpenLeaks, set up by Wikileaks defector Domscheit-Berg, highlighted this major lapse in security, saying that it "proves allegations" made by the former spokesperson that data held by Wikileaks is "not secure".

A number of media outlets were given the unredacted and unedited versions of the U.S. diplomatic cables. The Guardian (United Kingdom), Der Spiegel (Germany) and the New York Times (United States) and others, went through the first few hundred cables that were sent to them and redacted -- blacked out -- names of sources and informants.

While now the insurance file has been open to decryption -- perhaps what Mark Stephens, Assange's lawyer once described as "secret material which it regarded as a 'thermo-nuclear device' to be released if it needs to protect itself" -- the names of informants may not be safe.

Update: In a tweet, the @wikileaks says: "WikiLeaks 'insurance' files have not been decrypted. All press are currently misreporting. There is an issue, but not that issue."

[tangent4ronpaul]

http://rt.com/news/wikileaks-encrypt...-facebook-626/

WikiLeaks has released a trove of encrypted “insurance” data on Twitter and Facebook. The data can’t be read without an encryption key, but the movement’s supporters say that could be published later in case anything happens to leading WikiLeaks figures.

The whistleblowing organization published links for a massive 400 gigabytes worth of encrypted data it described as “insurance documents” on its Twitter and Facebook accounts. It is possible to download the files but advanced encoding prevents them from being opened.

WikiLeaks ✔ @wikileaks

WikiLeaks releases encrypted versions of upcoming publication data ("insurance") from time to time to nullify attempts at prior restraint.
4:36 после полудня - 17 августа 2013


The group described encryption as a necessary measure in light of previous attempts to block its leaking of classified information.

The practice of encoding data and then later releasing the key is not uncommon for WikiLeaks, but the sheer size of the files has attracted considerable attention. WikiLeaks followers on Facebook and Twitter speculated on what the documents might contain, and also that the key would be released if anything should happen to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange or NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

“They're files that will not have the passwords released unless something happens to specific individuals associated with WikiLeaks. Like the insurance file for Assange, which is more from the cables and info Manning leaked out,” Facebook user Tom-Eric Halvorsen wrote on WikiLeaks’ profile page.

The organization aided Snowden in his negotiations on temporary asylum in Russia following the leaking of classified US government data that revealed the NSA’s global surveillance programs. WikiLeaks has indicated that the data disclosed so far is only the tip of the iceberg, and that more revelations will follow.

However, there could be problems ahead for Snowden if more leaks are released, as the Russian government says that as a part of the temporary asylum agreement, Snowden should refrain from releasing data that “damages” the US. The whistleblower applied for asylum in Russia after the US voided his passport, leaving him stranded in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport for over a month.

Washington has branded the former NSA contractor a fugitive and issued an extradition order against him on charges of espionage.

In the wake of the revelations about the US government’s global spying programs, the Obama administration has sought to justify mass surveillance as a necessary evil to protect national security. Even so, President Barack Obama has announced a number of reforms to the NSA to increase its transparency and regulate the information collected by the government.

-t

[tangent4ronpaul]

http://gizmodo.com/what-could-be-in-...fil-1160521838

Wikileaks has stirred up its share of trouble in its day, but it might be up to something more. The site's been posting links to a trio of encrypted files pretty insistently on Facebook, and one of them is a whopping 349GB. What's in there?

It's not uncommon for Wikileaks to post an encrypted "insurance" file from time to time, with the key to follow on a latter date if at all, just in case. But 349GB is nothing to sneeze at; that's a huge chunk of something. It seems like there has to be something very impressive in there, and Wikileaks has posted the links to its Facebook page a number of times in the past 24 hours.

It's worth noting the timing; Bradley Manning's sentencing hearing is due to reach a verdict sometime next week. That, and there's always something going on with Edward Snowden, whose presumably giant cache of sensitive data has only been dribbling out. Could this be his treasure trove? Or part of it?

So far Wikileak's has been tight-lipped about the file being anything other than just standard, periodic insurance, but it's hard to ignore something that big. Any guesses? [Wikileaks via The Daily Dot]

A few of the more interesting comments:

My guess is that they release these knowing that the government has the power to decrypt things a lot easier than anyone else in the world. Then only the government can see the threat and be afraid of the public finding it out, and Wikileaks can keep blackmailing them by reminding them that they can release the keys.

==

==
It's weeks of videos of Obama playing Xbox with a still-living bin Laden and some aliens. Shot this year. As they discuss how they fix the results of every major sporting event, while spoiling the end of Breaking Bad.
==
Cats. Billions of pictures of cats. They're releasing them like this because they know that if the government released them freely, they would crash the net for weeks causing chaos. The only way to keep governments in check is to release them like this, so that the world leaders know who's in charge
==
Best guess: They've got nothing else worthwhile to share (for now), and this gives them time until they do...
==
Could very well be uncompressed video footage. Those files get $#@!-big quick.



OK, what do people HERE think is in these huge files?

-t

[tangent4ronpaul]

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/articl...e_as_insurance

It is unclear what is in the files but the speculation is it is the full NSA files partially released by Edward Snowden earlier this year.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/0...nsurance-files

From The Daily Dot:

With nothing better to go on, the Internet has decided that "insurance" may be code for "back off" to the U.S. government—coming just before the sentencing of WikiLeaks cause célèbre Bradley Manning.

File encryption means that the data is hidden and no one can see what's in the shared files without a key to unlock them—which, of course, hasn't been publicly released. The size of one of the files is 349 gigabytes, which means that there's either A) enough textual data inside to power a nationwide security crisis for the next 300 years or so, or B) a few very incriminating pieces of video footage.

"I'm getting the feeling these people are spreading some serious material," commented Facebook onlooker Angel Gabriell.

WikiLeaks abruptly released the files and asked the public to mirror them—on Facebook and Twitter, no less, hardly the place you go to drop off highly classified intelligence.


Something else to ponder-

From This Day In Wikileaks:

Julian Assange has been detained without charge for 984 days.
- 424 days at the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Bradley Manning has been in prison without sentencing for 1178 days.
- 35 days into court martial.

Jeremy Hammond has been in prison without sentencing for 530 days.

A secret Grand Jury on WikiLeaks has been active for 1063 days.

The Guardian has set up a section dedicated to stories about Wikileaks, Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and Afghanistan War Logs. It's a kind of 'one stop shopping' for their coverage of Wikileaks related news and information.

And, for those who want their information without filter, there's always Wikileaks website itself.
(almost 400 comments here, some good)


(this one is from before Snowden got asylum) :
Reporter: NSA leaker Snowden greatest threat to US in the nation's history
http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affa...#ixzz2cMXAqXmt

Greenwald, whose collaborations with Snowden for The Guardian exposed U.S. surveillance programs, says that means that U.S. officials should hope Snowden stays safe. If not, Greenwald says, a slew of harmful information about the U.S. would become public.

“Snowden has enough information to cause more damage to the U.S. government in a minute alone than anyone else has ever had in the history of the United States,” Greenwald told the Argentinian newspaper La Nacion.

Asked if he was afraid that Snowden might be killed, Greenwald said: “If something were to happen, those documents would be made public. This is your insurance policy.”

“The U.S. government should be on your knees every day praying that nothing happens to Snowden, because if something happens, all information will be revealed and that would be their worst nightmare,” Greenwald added.


-t

[Zippyjuan]

Julian Assange has been detained without charge for 984 days.
- 424 days at the Ecuadorian Embassy.

I thought he was there by choice (and wasn't the reason he went there that there were charges against him?

A year after Julian Assange first entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London and requested asylum, he has told journalists that he won't leave even if Sweden drops its rape charges against him.

This is because he believes that the US has begun indictiment proceedings against him, and he would still be in danger of being prosecuted on espionage charges for Wikileaks' release of American intelligence information.

Speaking to a small group of journalists, and reported by the Evening Standard, he said: "The strong view of my US lawyer is that there is already a sealed indictment which means I would be arrested, unless the British Government gave information or guarantees that would grant me safe passage."


"We know there is an ongoing investigation in the US and we know I am a target of the Federal grand jury. There is a 99.97 percent chance that I will be indicted. So if the Swedish government drops their request tomorrow, I still cannot leave the embassy."

He also added that his plan to take shelter in the embassy -- which has led to a stalemate between the British and Ecuadorian governments -- was "strategically... exactly what I hoped for".

[HOLLYWOOD]

TOTO gonna reveal the wizard(s) behind rigged planet elitist?

[WM_in_MO]

Any updates?

[tangent4ronpaul]

http://news.yahoo.com/wikileaks-says...153313167.html

WikiLeaks on Wednesday said a 35-year jail term handed down to U.S. soldier Bradley Manning for leaking classified files to the pro-transparency organization was a "strategic victory" as it meant he was eligible for parole in less than a decade.

"Significant strategic victory in Bradley Manning case," WikiLeaks said on its official Twitter feed. "Bradley Manning now eligible for release in less than 9 years, 4.4 in one calculation."

In a full statement issued later, WikiLeaks said that Manning's trial and conviction had been "an affront to basic concepts of Western justice".

"The only just outcome in Mr Manning's case is his unconditional release, compensation for the unlawful treatment he has undergone, and a serious commitment to investigating the wrongdoing his alleged disclosures have brought to light," WikiLeaks said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously praised Manning as "the most important journalistic source that the world has ever seen", but has neither confirmed nor denied whether Manning supplied WikiLeaks with classified documents, saying the group never revealed its sources.

"Mr Manning's treatment has been intended to send a signal to people of conscience in the US government who might seek to bring wrongdoing to light," WikiLeaks said in the same statement, saying the strategy had backfired. "As a result, there will be a thousand more Bradley Mannings."

-t

[tangent4ronpaul]

Where is Snowden's data?

Snowden arrived in Hong Kong with 4 laptops and spent a couple of weeks with Greenwald and the Poitras.
The story breaks...
NSA goes into full and complete FREAK OUT mode! They set up a task force and embark on a full systems forensic audit. This is obviously taking some time as the Guardian will publish a story, there is outrage, the administration comes back and lies to the public to explain away the outrage, the Guardian turns around and publishes something else proving that the administration just lied to the American/world public again. Wash, rinse repeat. If they knew what he had, they wouldn't get caught repeatedly lying.
Greenwald has a laptop stolen from his home. Greenwald then states that data has been distributed and hidden across the Internet as insurance in case anything happens to one of them.
GCHQ has a "discussion" with the Guardian newspaper, resulting in the destruction of "a number of" hard drives...
Snowden departs for Russia with 3 laptops.
He hooks up with Julian Assange's old GF and now WikiLeaks claims they have the data. They release almost 400 GB of encrypted insurance files.
Snowden takes back his request for asylum in Russia due to the condition that he stop leaking. A week later he agrees and re-submits that request. Sounds to me like he didn't give Greenwald everything initially and the easiest solution was to hand everything over and then agree to the condition, as he would have nothing left to leak.
Now Poitras and Greenwald's SO get together and he's being a mule for the exchange of a significant amount of data he does not know the content of. A laptop, 2 thumb drives and an external hard drive are confiscated. That's a lot of data, and that was coming back. He delivered a lot of data on the trip out. Remember Snowden had 4 laptops and a bunch of thumb drives starting out and the Guardian got at least 4 HD's from him.
And then there are a few newspapers that got a single document or two each...

Did I forget anything?



-t

[tangent4ronpaul]

Report: The NSA Is 'Overwhelmed' As It Still Doesn't Know Everything Snowden Took
http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-s...en-took-2013-8

...
Ironically, the NSA's poor audit capability is reportedly frustrating efforts to complete a damage assessment.
...
"I did not do an exact count, but he gave me 15,000, 20,000 documents. Very, very complete and very long," Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has been reporting on the leaks, told the Brazilian Senates foreign relations committee.

Greenwald has also said that some of the documents constitute "the instruction manual for how the NSA is built."

-t