Malicious ZIP archives found in the AKP leak on the Wikileaks site • Hacker News Board

Re: Malicious ZIP archives found in the AKP leak on the Wikileaks site

#21

Post by somenomadicguy » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 1:58 PM UTC

> Seriously. What has "innocent until proven guilty" devolved into? You're bordering on libel. > Until a court has convicted Appelbaum of the crime of rape, he is not a rapist.

I know Jake very well, I've worked with him in the past and he has conned me into bailing him out of several situations. I also know a good number of women he has dated, including two ex-gfs of mine. I have little doubt of his guilt. Anybody who knows him well has little doubt as well, even if they won't admit it. Because of an ex whom he .. let's say mistreated .. I found myself the target of one of his harassment campaigns long after I stopped dating her. To know Jake is to come face to face with a sociopath.

Re: Malicious ZIP archives found in the AKP leak on the Wikileaks site

#22

Post by at-fates-hands » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 1:58 PM UTC

somenomadicguy wrote: post #8

I read through about 1/2 of the AKP "leaks", it was a tremendous waste of time for anything but improving comprehension of Türkçe. At a point in time, I truly believed Assange's goals were justice and transparency, now I am beginning to feel like he has his own political agenda, and is making sophomoric attempts to affect political change. In 2016 Wikileaks's agenda seems to be: - Anti-Hillary - Anti-Hillary - Pro-Tr…

>> In 2016 Wikileaks's agenda seems to be:

  - Anti-Hillary
  - Anti-Hillary
  - Pro-Trump
  - Pro-Putin
  - Anti-Hillary
  - Opportunistic

I actually laughed when I read this. I actually laughed when Sean Hannity had him on and was talking about he thinks he should be a free man and what great work he's doing.

Backtrack a few years ago, and it was the Republicans and all their supporters who wanted to tar and feather Assange for the Snowden leaks. Hannity talked about how Assange should be in jail and all the crimes he committed against the US intelligence community, got CIA people killed and on and on and on.

It's clear it depends on who's OX is being gored with Assange, which makes him a unique personality to deal with. I don't think he picks sides, he just always picks the publicity angle and doesn't really care who gets in the line of fire. The funny part is how each side treats him like a savior or some kind of patriot but then when he gets leaked documents on their side, suddenly he's the bad guy?

I just don't like him period, but he does have a flair the dramatic doesn't he?

Re: Malicious ZIP archives found in the AKP leak on the Wikileaks site

#23

Post by CM30 » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 1:59 PM UTC

When you've got a small organisation with limited resources and less help from others (like say, media groups), it's not surprising stuff like this will slip through.

And hey, it's also not surprising a bunch of email sent to powerful figures would have scumbags trying to infect their PC with malware in the process. If Obama had a public email, a large percentage of that would be either infected by something or trying to steal credentials via phishing.

Should they have removed dodgy malware? Sure, but for an organisation with limited resources, a founder stuck in an embassy for years on end and far less of the press willing to help them out, having this stuff there isn't exactly unexpected.

Re: Malicious ZIP archives found in the AKP leak on the Wikileaks site

#24

Post by nbevans » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 1:59 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #18

nbevans wrote: post #7

Can anyone explain if the title and vague explanation is really true? Malicious ZIPs implies to most that simply opening the ZIP, perhaps with a particular ZIP archive tool, is sufficient to cause infection. If this is the case then it's a 0-day and this fact needs reporting and analysing separately from all the noise regarding WikiLeaks.

A more accurate summary would be "Wikileaks releases many AKP emails, including lots of received spam. Some of the spam has ZIP files containing malware." So good question, and it looks like the answer is this isn't a novel attack, just normal malware-spam and an imprecise summary.

A load of fuss about nothing then :)

Re: Malicious ZIP archives found in the AKP leak on the Wikileaks site

#25

Post by ajamesm » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 2:00 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #16

somenomadicguy wrote: post #8

I read through about 1/2 of the AKP "leaks", it was a tremendous waste of time for anything but improving comprehension of Türkçe. At a point in time, I truly believed Assange's goals were justice and transparency, now I am beginning to feel like he has his own political agenda, and is making sophomoric attempts to affect political change. In 2016 Wikileaks's agenda seems to be: - Anti-Hillary - Anti-Hillary - Pro-Tr…

> His best buddy Jake Appelbaum is a rapist? CIA Seriously. What has "innocent until proven guilty" devolved into? You're bordering on libel. Until a court has convicted Appelbaum of the crime of rape, he is not a rapist. I personally think that the accusations may have a kernel of truth, but are greatly exaggerated by the participants. Only a criminal court is properly equipped with means (both legal and time) to re…

Al Capone was a gangster. Does that unfounded accusation also inflame your sense of justice? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

'Innocent until proven guilty' concerns the court system, but not the rest of civil society. If someone throws up all the red flags of a rapist, nobody is obligated to balk at them.

Re: Malicious ZIP archives found in the AKP leak on the Wikileaks site

#26

Post by somenomadicguy » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 2:02 PM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #20

somenomadicguy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There might be a much simpler reason for all of this. Being stuck in the embassy for years has severely taxed his emotional stability, encouraging narcissism, paranoia, and victimhood. At the very least, his journalism is sloppy, irresponsible, and ever-decreasing in integrity.

Both his sexual assaults and his antisemitism predate him running away to the embassy. He ran away to the embassy in 2012 because he refused to take responsibility for his sexual assaults. In 2010 he hired Israel Shamir, an extremely outspoken antisemitic blogger, to help run Wikileaks, and a number of photographs show that they had been close friends for some time before Assange hired him. When he was confronted abo…

Assange is absolutely a criminal for breaking the terms of his bail. The sexual assault charges, however, are unproven, and he really deserves his day in court, whether he is guilty or innocent. I hadn't heard the anti-semite bit before, however.

Re: Malicious ZIP archives found in the AKP leak on the Wikileaks site

#27

Post by grandalf » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 2:04 PM UTC

somenomadicguy wrote: post #8

I read through about 1/2 of the AKP "leaks", it was a tremendous waste of time for anything but improving comprehension of Türkçe. At a point in time, I truly believed Assange's goals were justice and transparency, now I am beginning to feel like he has his own political agenda, and is making sophomoric attempts to affect political change. In 2016 Wikileaks's agenda seems to be: - Anti-Hillary - Anti-Hillary - Pro-Tr…

> I am beginning to feel like he has his own political agenda

This is the position of some of the people/groups he's embarrassed. As if to say "Yes, I've been caught, but the person who helped catch me has it out for me, let's just ignore this".

Also, as the US Army intelligence service underscored a few years ago, Wikileaks is ripe for propaganda use, since information can be provided to WL to suit political goals, and with some information removed to create a specific impression.

The US Army Intelligence analysis also suggested that an effective strategy to harm WL would be to leak materials that would reflect poorly on it and and cause people to question Assange's motives. No doubt all powerful entities (governments, people) realize this. WL has many enemies and so likely many are using both of these strategies as situations permit.

Have you read the details of the rape accusations? Sweden has a particular definition of rape that is far more encompassing of conduct that in most jurisdictions constitutes fully consensual activity. Since the claims against Assange would be considered claims of consensual sex in the US, it's hard for me to take them entirely seriously, yet the label of "Rapist" persists. This phenomenon is truly bizarre.

The question to ask is, what qualities do we most hope something like Wikileaks has, so that it can aid the process of truth, transparency, and careful investigative journalism. I'd suggest the following:

- Strong willingness to work with mainstream news outlets to create high production quality investigative journalism (Assange has done all he possibly could).

- Resilience to meddling by the many enemies one makes (Assange has done well with this).

- Reinforcing the strength and bias-free nature of the institution (Assange has made clear that he finds Trump and Hillary both despicable, yet this comment is ignored by many such as yourself).

Re: Malicious ZIP archives found in the AKP leak on the Wikileaks site

#28

Post by grandalf » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 2:04 PM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #17

somenomadicguy wrote: post #8

I read through about 1/2 of the AKP "leaks", it was a tremendous waste of time for anything but improving comprehension of Türkçe. At a point in time, I truly believed Assange's goals were justice and transparency, now I am beginning to feel like he has his own political agenda, and is making sophomoric attempts to affect political change. In 2016 Wikileaks's agenda seems to be: - Anti-Hillary - Anti-Hillary - Pro-Tr…

Could the anti-Hillary agenda simply be that he has leaks on her? The DNC stuff was damning, as was the reaction. (Bad actor resigns, gets immediately hired without reprimand?) He's said negative Trump stuff - how has he been positive there? If someone brought internal Trump emails, do you think WL wouldn't publish them? If this had been flipped, and he had only published anti-Trump stuff, would you be making the sam…

You are right to question this. His comment parrots the opinion of the HRC campaign which there is zero evidence for.

Re: Malicious ZIP archives found in the AKP leak on the Wikileaks site

#29

Post by dmix » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 2:05 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #19

dmix wrote: post #14

So a spammy email in one of the thousands leaked happened to contained malware? And this is newsworthy why? People here are using this to question Wikileaks integrity but it seems like a minor mistake given the contents of the dump. This has happened before in hacker dumps on a number of occasions but this one isn't even malicious (targeting wikileaks users). I don't open random zips from spam emails on my machine an…

Because there's a growing campaign trying to paint Wikileaks as a the "bad guys" (again). Combine that with the fact that most people don't want Trump to win, so they're automatically on Clinton's side, and with Clinton's deflection of the DNC hack documents that pointed to election rigging towards who hacked the DNC, and that anti-Wikileaks campaign is suddenly a lot more effective. So now when other sites write abo…

True, Wikileaks has become politicized recently. I like to check the comment section on NYTimes and other news sites around election times. They always seem to be far more partisan than usual. Almost like people are whipped up into a frenzy supporting their sports franchise to the point it almost seems fake.

Considering there are hundreds of millions of dollars going into either side of the campaign I'd question the source of any online comment taking a highly partisan position that perfectly fits into party lines. Could be either direct 50-cent armies [1] style astroturfing or regular people influenced by other comments fed elsewhere online, or worse, articles fed to reputable news sites.

Even GCHQ docs from the Snowden leaks showed that five eyes have been successfully experimenting with controlling online conversations since at least 2012. So it's definitely doable with a dedicated team.

This is modern PR. Another thing that sites like HN/reddit increasingly have to contend with to keep content authentic and quality...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party?wprov=sfla1

Re: Malicious ZIP archives found in the AKP leak on the Wikileaks site

#30

Post by grandalf » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 2:07 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #29

mtgx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there's a growing campaign trying to paint Wikileaks as a the "bad guys" (again). Combine that with the fact that most people don't want Trump to win, so they're automatically on Clinton's side, and with Clinton's deflection of the DNC hack documents that pointed to election rigging towards who hacked the DNC, and that anti-Wikileaks campaign is suddenly a lot more effective. So now when other sites write abo…

True, Wikileaks has become politicized recently. I like to check the comment section on NYTimes and other news sites around election times. They always seem to be far more partisan than usual. Almost like people are whipped up into a frenzy supporting their sports franchise to the point it almost seems fake. Considering there are hundreds of millions of dollars going into either side of the campaign I'd question the…

I think this is a very real concern. Considering how stupid the average comment is on a site like that, and considering how most comments simply parrot talking points from other parties, it's likely straightforward to create astroturfing bots.