In his first utterance since uncensored Wikileaks cables were released to the media, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has waded into his former business partner The Manchester Guardian.
Speaking via a video link while addressing a Berlin technology trade fair, Assange said that a hack from the Guardian had published the password to the encrypted files in his book, creating a situation where some people got access to the uncensored files while others did not.
According to AP, Assange said it created a case where every spy agency had the material and the people who are mentioned did not.
Assange said that there was a race between the bad guys and the good guys and it was necessary for us to "stand on the side of the good guys". Obviously standing on the side of the good guys means giving their names and addresses to the bad guys who may or may not hire some more bad guys to bump them off.
WikiLeaks on Friday posted the 251,287 cables on its website, making potentially sensitive diplomatic sources available to anyone.
The Guardian's website said it and its international media counterparts, The New York Times, France's Le Monde, Germany's Der Spiegel and Spain's El Pais "deplored the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk".
Assange pointed out that a sensitive password used to decrypt the files was published in a book by David Leigh, one of the paper's investigative reporters and a collaborator-turned-critic of Assange.
While he was blaming people, Assange also waded into another former chum, WikiLeaks defector Daniel Domscheit-Berg. He claimed that Domscheit-Berg told media organisations where to find the encrypted files and how to use the password. Although if the password had been published by Leigh it would have made the later a fairly pointless effort.
Assange said that Domscheit-Berg had been spreading the location of a hidden encrypted file that had been encrypted with that password with selected media organisations in order to gain personal benefit.
The Guardian, Leigh and others have already rejected the claim that they were responsible for the leak. It points out that WikiLeaks posted the encrypted file to the web by accident and that Assange never bothered to change the password needed to unlock it.
Writer of this article should point out that this an impossible task: one can't change a decryption password from a file that is alrealdy leaked in to the internet because there are copies of the file available that use the password leaked in the book.
Assange could have released the file again with new encryption key, but that would have not made any difference because the old files would still be available to anyone who knows where to find them. And apparently someone had already leaked where to find the files.
This just demonstrates that Guardian and Leigh fucked things up beyond repair.
Or, you know, he could have changed the password as soon as the other one became compromised. He could have also not "accidently" leaked the file.
Yes, it is correct that there are difficulties in changing passwords to files where the number of copies are unknown. Thus it is important to ensure that each group has access to their own copy of the file and password for that file. Also, the file needed to be restricted against being copied by those outside Wikileaks.
The difficulty in changing a password after it is release, indicates the importance of ensuring that the passwords are known by two or three people (if not only one). There is also an importance of having several passwords for each files. This isn't impossible, and with Assanges apparent experience he should know this.
For Assange to blame others for his is mistake speaks volumes about his character. He doesn't have to accept that this debacle was his fault, but to stop blaming others.
The source of "can't change a decryption password...leaked in the book" apparent came from. Which makes one wonder why it took over 6 months to address the issue. Did Assange have someone check the books contents?
The more this issue to considered it just gets worse. Image that some of the same people who are defend Assanges incompetence might have blame Sony after their system got hacked.
Les journalistes n'est pas en péril des jeoparde', Assange est.
So who´s to blame here? Well, isn´t it obvious? Julian Assange!
So who´s to blame here? Well, isn´t it obvious? Julian Assange!"
It was originally believed that it would have been appropriate to indicate the inconsistent assertions made support of Assange.
Strange perhaps but the explanation is simple. I usually write my comments in a texteditor before i post them. This time i assumed my first post got lost, because of an error, so i copied and pasted another one using a different alias.
You should explain in what sense my comment is an assertion. Your claim that "this entire blunder his [Assange] fault" is not true. I don´t even think that David Leigh and DDB would agree with you on that claim.