Background:The detention of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange triggered an all out cyberwar between those sympathetic to the former Australian hacker and US supporters. In the crossfire: websites and computer networks of either faction, taken down by coordinated attacks aimed to disrupt their ability to carry on business, control and command forces and publish information.
We'll continue to update this rolling commentary as news breaks.
Know more? Let us know in the comments below or send email to wikiwar(a)securecomputing.net.au
9/12/2010
1340 hrs: The Californian city of Berkeley is considering awarding alleged Cablegate whistleblower Bradley Manning "hero" status for "courage in bringing truth to the American people and the people of the world", Kim Zetter reports in Wired. Author of the resolution, Bob Meola said:
If he did what he's accused of doing, he's a patriot and should get a medal. I think the war criminals should be the ones prosecuted, not the whistle-blowers.
Berkeley, which is home to the famous eponymous university and a centre for technology research and companies such as Pixar, was a centre of the hippy movement in the '60s.
1330: Wikileaks mirror count: 1334. Number in Australia: four.
1320: Time magazine says in the era of crowdsourcing, apprehending Julian Assange is a win for Wikileaks and its followers.
The asymmetrical info war initiated by the WikiLeaks dump of diplomatic cables is all about spectacle - the more Assange is set up by world powers, the more powerful his own movement becomes.
1312: ThePayPalblog.com is back online with its earlier, updated statement on why it strangled funds to Wikileaks, although it's not accepting comments.
Media reports today regarding a statement made by our vice president of platform, mobile and new ventures, Osama Bedier, at the LeWeb conference in Paris, have created confusion about PayPal's decision to permanently restrict the account that was raising funds for WikiLeaks. We want to set the record straight.
As a global payment service that moves billions of our customers' funds across borders and across jurisdictions, we are required to comply with laws around the world. Compliance with these laws is something we take very seriously. PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy states that we do not allow any organization to use our service if it encourages, promotes, facilitates or instructs others to engage in illegal activity. This policy is part of an agreement we've made with our account holders and with the companies that allow us to process global payments. It's also an important part of our commitment to protect our customers and to ensure our business can continue operating around the world.
In 2008 and 2009, PayPal reviewed and restricted the account associated with WikiLeaks for reasons unrelated to our Acceptable Use Policy. As soon as proper information was received from the account holder, the restrictions were lifted.
The account was again reviewed last week after the U.S. Department of State publicized a letter to WikiLeaks on November 27, stating that WikiLeaks may be in possession of documents that were provided in violation of U.S. law. PayPal was not contacted by any government organization in the U.S. or abroad. We restricted the account based on our Acceptable Use Policy review. Ultimately, our difficult decision was based on a belief that the WikiLeaks website was encouraging sources to release classified material, which is likely a violation of law by the source.
While the account will remain restricted, PayPal will release all remaining funds in the account to the foundation that was raising funds for WikiLeaks.
We understand that PayPal's decision has become part of a broader story involving political, legal and free speech debates surrounding WikiLeaks' activities. None of these concerns factored into our decision. Our only consideration was whether or not the account associated with WikiLeaks violated our Acceptable Use Policy and regulations required of us as a global payment company. Our actions in this matter are consistent with any account found to be in violation of our policies.
1305: The Internet Society says in its monthly newsletter that EveryDNS' action in yanking Wikileaks' domain name from under it "dramatically puts the principles" of "free expression and non discrimination that are essential to preserve the openness and utility of the internet" at risk. And it says those who "maliciously" took Wikileaks down should face prosecution.
Recently, we have witnessed the effective disappearance from the Internet of a website made infamous through international press coverage and political intrigue.
The Internet Society is founded upon key principles of free expression and non discrimination that are essential to preserve the openness and utility of the Internet. We believe that this incident dramatically illustrates that those principles are currently at risk.
Recognizing the content of the wikileaks.org website is the subject of concern to a variety of individuals and nations, we nevertheless believe it must be subject to the same laws and policies of availability as all Internet sites. Free expression should not be restricted by governmental or private controls over computer hardware or software, telecommunications infrastructure, or other essential components of the Internet.
Resilience and cooperation are built into the Internet as a design principle. The cooperation among several organizations has ensured that the impact on the Wikileaks organizational website has not prevented all access to Wikileaks material. This further underscores that the removal of a domain is an ineffective tool to suppress communication, merely serving to undermine the integrity of the global Internet and its operation.
Unless and until appropriate laws are brought to bear to take the wikileaks.org domain down legally, technical solutions should be sought to reestablish its proper presence, and appropriate actions taken to pursue and prosecute entities (if any) that acted maliciously to take it off the air.
1300: Confronted with suspicion that it was censoring discussion of Wikileaks, Twitter clarified how trends came to be on the popular microblogging site.
Sometimes a topic doesn't break into the Trends list because its popularity isn't as widespread as people believe. And, sometimes, popular terms don't make the Trends list because the velocity of conversation isn't increasing quickly enough, relative to the baseline level of conversation happening on an average day; this is what happened with #wikileaks this week.
Noon: PayPal, Visa and Mastercard say their core networks are operational although acknowledge attacks against their public websites are having an impact. PayPal's official social media website thepaypalblog.com is again down. Anonymous (AnonOps), the group coordinating the "Operation: Payback" attacks against the infrastructure of those aligned with the US Government, is itself offline.
0930: In taking down Visa, hackers appear to have done what Monica Lewinski, Mars Pathfinder and the World Cup couldn't do: overload the world's most sophisticated content distribution network, Akamai, Finnish anti-malware researcher Mikko Hypponen tweeted.
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