Inside the Fortified, Nuke-Proof Bunker that's Now Hosting Wikileaks • Hacker News Board

Re: Inside the Fortified, Nuke-Proof Bunker that's Now Hosting Wikileaks

#51

Post by cosmicray » Thu, Dec 02, 2010, 5:27 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #25

Pfiffer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The floors are also unusually strong, designed to carry 200 to 300 pound per square foot (10 - 15 kPa) live loads. This is pretty much the coolest thing I've seen all day. I'm not sure what kind of standards buildings are held up to in terms of load-per-foot-squared, but that seems like an awful lot to me. That building is incredible.

Most purpose built datacenters are >100 lb/sf. You only really need in excess of that for rooms full of batteries. Even generators, while individually heavy, usually have enough spare space around them that the overall loading in the room isn't approaching banks of batteries. Most datacenters which are in excess of that were either originally built for telcos (crazy battery banks for the DC plant), or were industrial…

> You only really need in excess of that for rooms full of batteries.

Behold, racks of crossbar switches (from one such AT&T facility). I'm glad these things are pretty much a relic of the past. I suspect the weight of those racks was one reason for the floor load ratings. http://long-lines.net/places-routes/MoundsOK/DSC00536A.html

Re: Inside the Fortified, Nuke-Proof Bunker that's Now Hosting Wikileaks

#52

Post by grinich » Thu, Dec 02, 2010, 6:35 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #20

pigbucket wrote: post #7

"...one wonders why Swedish Bahnhof would take on the challenge of hosting a site that will probably be under permanent attack for the foreseeable future. Unless it's for the PR value" That's a good example of allowing one's imagination of possibilities to wander over very short distances. Is it that inconceivable that a company might be motivated by something other than the bottom line? Arvinjoar commented earlier o…

Indeed. It's a little depressing that we live in a world where someone driven by principles instead of profits is regarded as extraordinary.

I think it has to do with the author/editors.

Most journalism today is driven by profits, not principles. Sites like this are practicing textbook yellow journalism, trying to grab eyeballs to save the sinking ship of newspapers. Principles and integrity are now so foreign an idea for them that it comes out in the writing.

Julian Assange and Wikileaks are muckrakers, and that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Directly, the exposed governments and corporations. But indirectly, also the titans of "journalism" and news.

Journalism is meant to push society, and right now Julian Assange is doing exactly that. WikiLeaks is like a new kid on the block, turning over rocks and standing up to bullies.

Re: Inside the Fortified, Nuke-Proof Bunker that's Now Hosting Wikileaks

#53

Post by JoachimSchipper » Fri, Dec 03, 2010, 8:53 AM UTC

ergo98 wrote: post #45

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the vulnerability of [cryptography] Well, no. Competently done crypto is uncrackable for all practical purposes without side-channel attacks. Or, maybe, quantum computers (RSA; but why would you use RSA for this?)

Well, yes, of course. Competently done. Competently done crypotgraphy is rare, and most common cryptography is not competently done. Which is exactly the point of my post.

Most crypto implementations are vulnerable, yes, but the percentage of vulnerable deployed crypto implementations as a fraction of all deployed implementations looks much better.

Note that I'm talking crypto: the OpenSSL people seem quite able to make all sorts of mistakes, but it's almost never the crypto itself that is at fault. (Today's news: a workaround for Netscape's stupidities apparently allows attackers to downgrade to a worse protocol suite in certain cases. Stupid bug, but not crypto per se.)

So yes, there are errors, but publishing something AES-encrypted and giving away, say, half the key doesn't tell us anything about those.

Re: Inside the Fortified, Nuke-Proof Bunker that's Now Hosting Wikileaks

#54

Post by JoachimSchipper » Fri, Dec 03, 2010, 8:55 AM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #47

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the vulnerability of [cryptography] Well, no. Competently done crypto is uncrackable for all practical purposes without side-channel attacks. Or, maybe, quantum computers (RSA; but why would you use RSA for this?)

Are there any forms of encryption which take a predictable and precisely defined amount of computing power to decrypt? e.g. Some asymmetric so that I could encrypt something easily but then require someone who wants to decrypt the message to perform 100 Trillion operations to decrypt it?

It's almost always probabilistic - someone guessing the right key the first time could break it very quickly.

It may be possible to reduce variance in cracking times by requiring multiple cracks (use a secret sharing scheme to break up the "real" key in chunks; encrypt each chunk in a crackable way.)

Re: Inside the Fortified, Nuke-Proof Bunker that's Now Hosting Wikileaks

#55

Post by eneveu » Sat, Dec 04, 2010, 11:49 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #30

sliverstorm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far less visible to normal, ordinary people, who they need to reach. The success of WikiLeaks depends in part on being highly visible and accessible by anyone and everyone- ironically, much the same as terrorism. (Not that I believe they are a terrorist organization, but they definitely function kind of like one, at least superficially) I imagine the day somebody figures out how to make a HTTP-compatible P2P net…

> It's far less visible to normal, ordinary people, who they need to reach. There's no reason they can't do both.

I think there is more to it than a desire to space the releases to get better PR.

They may want to verify the authenticity of the documents to avoid fake leaks. They may also want to edit some documents to remove data that would put individual persons at risk, like they did with Cablegate.

Doing this takes time, and may not be short-circuited easily.

They can't simply encrypt the files, release them using P2P, and then edit them / check them for authenticity. I guess it would be useful as an insurance, though.