WikiLeaks

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Summary

This documentation is about WikiLeaks, media organization and Web site that functioned as a clearinghouse for unethical, illegal or otherwise privileged information. WikiLeaks was founded in 2006 by Australian computer programmer and activist Julian Assange.

Awards

WikiLeaks, its publisher and its journalists have won many awards, including:

  • The Economist New Media Award (2008)
  • The Amnesty New Media Award (2009)
  • TIME Magazine Person of the Year, People's Choice (highest global vote) (2010)
  • The Sam Adams Award for Integrity (2010)
  • The National Union of Journalists Journalist of the Year (Hrafnsson) (2011)
  • The Sydney Peace Foundation Gold Medal (2011)
  • The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism (2011)
  • The Blanquerna Award for Best Communicator (2011)
  • The Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism (2011)
  • The Voltaire Award for Free Speech (2011)
  • The International Piero Passetti Journalism Prize of the National Union of Italian Journalists (2011)
  • The Jose Couso Press Freedom Award (2011)
  • The Privacy International Hero of Privacy (2012)
  • The Global Exchange Human Rights People's Choice Award (2013)
  • The Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts (2013)
  • The Brazillian Press Association Human Rights Award (2013)
  • The Kazakstan Union of Journalists Top Prize (2014)

As well as nominations for the UN Mandela Prize (2015) and nominations in six consecutive years for the Nobel Peace Prize (2010-2015)

About

“WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world's most persecuted documents. We give asylum to these documents, we analyze them, we promote them and we obtain more.” - Julian Assange, Der Spiegel Interview

The founder - Julian Assange

Julian Assange

Assange gained his first programming experience on a Commodore 64 computer, and in 1987 he also acquired an Internet hub. He began his hacking activities under the pseudonym “Mendax” (Latin: noble liar). He and two other hackers formed a group called “International Subversives.” This activity led to the Australian Federal Police in 1991 In 1992, Julian Assange was found guilty of 24 counts of illegal hacking and the court ordered him to pay A 2,100 dollar and put him on probation. In 1995, Assange wrote his first free software, called Strobe.

During his hacker activities he became acquainted with his later wife. They moved together in 1989 and had a son. They divorced in 1991. In 1999, after a one-year legal dispute, Assange and her mother, Christine, reached joint custody of the child’s mother.

He has been involved with WikiLeaks since 2006. He claims to have made a living on the internet and is therefore able to work for WikiLeaks without pay. During his work on WikiLeaks, he was arrested, interrogated, censored and sued several times, all to no avail.

History

WikiLeaks is an international nonprofit organization. It publishes leaked government and other documents on the Internet that exposes an unethical, illegal case or process, while keeping its sources anonymous. The system that enables file uploads is implemented via the Tor anonymization network. The website was launched in 2006, operated by The Sunshine Press. WikiLeaks claims that its founders were professionals from Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-ups who came to the organization from the United States, Europe, Taiwan, Australia and South Africa. Sweden was originally the site of the founding, and the public face was Australian exhacker Julian Assange.

According to the staff, the database of the site contained 1.2 million documents a year after its launch. The most echoed leaks were the nearly 92,000 military and similar secret documents related to the war in Afghanistan, the “Collateral Murder” video, the nearly 400,000 secret military reports released during the Iraq war, and 250,000 various messages sent by U.S. diplomats. Following the leak of diplomatic messages, the U.S. government launched a drive hunt against WikiLeaks, over and above Visa, Mastercard and PayPal refused to pass on donations to them.

Chronology

2006

The domain wikileaks.org is registered. The founders of Wikileaks, including Julian Assange, have made it their business to anonymously publish previously secret documents.

2007

Wikileaks is publishing documents for the first time and getting a bit of attention. Among other things, the founders put internal manuals from the US prison camp Guantanamo online. They prove the psychological torture methods used by the military. This year Julian Assange met his biggest supporter and partner, Daniel Domscheit-Berg.

2010

  • Wikileaks lands its first big coup: video footage of a US military helicopter attacking civilians in 2007, including two reporters. The skepticism towards Wikileaks is still high.
  • US soldier Chelsea Manning is arrested in Iraq. She is alleged to have leaked documents, including the video of the US attack on civilians in 2007, to Wikileaks.
  • In cooperation with the British "The Guardian", the US American "New York Times" and the German "Spiegel", Wikileaks is going public with war documents: the "Afghan War Diaries" determine the news.
  • Daniel Domscheit-Berg, German spokesman for Wikileaks, leaves the project in a dispute with Assange.
  • Assange has been arrested in Sweden on charges of sexual assault and rape. He is wanted by Interpol, later arrested and released on bail. He is then under house arrest.
  • The domain wikileaks.org is temporarily unavailable. Companies like Amazon, Paypal, Visa or Mastercard stop working with Wikileaks due to political pressure.
  • In the meantime, the Wikileaks pages are "mirrored", so the content is stored as a copy on numerous servers around the world. However, no more documents can be uploaded.

2011

  • "Der Freitag" reports a data leak at Wikileaks - for months all unprocessed US dispatches were freely accessible on the Internet, with all of the original senders. A British journalist's book contained the password to decrypt the file. In response, Wikileaks publishes all US cables on September 2nd, unprocessed.
  • Wikileaks publishes the so-called SpyFiles and cooperates with the NDR for the first time.


2012

  • Millions of emails from the US company Stratfor can be found in "The Global Intelligence Files" on Wikileaks. Partners, including the NDR, are given a preview of the data.
  • After the British Supreme Court allowed Assange to be extradited to Sweden, the Wikileaks founder fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London before being arrested. He applies for political asylum.

2016

  • Whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been sentenced to 35 years in prison, among other things, for espionage.
  • Wikileaks publishes emails from the account of John Podesta, campaign manager for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Representatives of the Clinton campaign accuse Wikileaks of promoting Russia's President Vladimir Putin. Ecuador then restricts Julian Assange's internet access for a while.
  • Internal documents from the NSA committee of inquiry appear on Wikileaks.

2017

  • US President Barack Obama pardons Chelsea Manning in one of his final acts.

2018

  • It is revealed that the US is planning to bring charges against Julian Assange of treason. The proceedings in Sweden are now suspended.

2019

  • Wikileaks publishes over 30000 documents from SAMHERJI and 2 other leaks came out this year
  • Chelsea Manning is arrested again for refusing to testify in the Julian Assange trial.
  • Julian Assange is arrested in London. Ecuador had previously withdrawn his diplomatic asylum and is allowing British police officers to enter the embassy. Scotland Yard confirms that the US has requested extradition against Assange.

2021

  • WikiLeaks publishes "The Intolerance Network" over 17,000 documents from internationally active right wing campaigning organisations HazteOir and CitizenGO.
  • "Julian Assange faces a 175 year prison sentence in the United States for publishing documents, including those which exposed wilful, or otherwise reckless, sabotage of climate action during prior climate change summits." - Wikileaks site


Famous Leaks

  • US Military Equipment in Afghanistan - The full equipment register of every US Army managed unit in Afghanistan from psychological operations ("PsyOps") and interrogation units to Kabul headquarters. [[US Military Equipment in Afghanistan]]
  • Collateral Murder - A classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff. [[Collateral Murder]]
  • Hillary Clinton Email Archive - A searchable archive for over 30 thousand emails & email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton's private email server while she was Secretary of State. [[Hillary Clinton Email Archive]]
  • Sony Files - 30,287 documents from Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) and 173,132 emails to and from more than 2,200 SPE email addresses. [[Sony Files]]
  • CIA espionage orders for the 2012 French presidential election - All major French political parties were targeted for infiltration by the CIA's human and electronic spies in the seven months leading up to France's 2012 presidential election. [[CIA France Elections]]

VAULT 7 - CIA Hacking Tools

  • Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed - A series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named "Vault 7" by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency. [[CIA Hacking Tools]]

All VAULT7 Tools can be found on the WikiLeaks website. Here is a list of their names and a small description from the WikiLeaks site:

  • Project Dark Matter - contains documentation for several CIA projects that infect Apple Mac Computer firmware
  • Marble Framework - 676 source code files for the CIA's secret anti-forensic Marble Framework
  • Grasshopper Framework - a platform used to build customized malware payloads for Microsoft Windows operating systems
  • HIVE (There is a leak from 2017 called VAULT8: Hive which is a source code repository related to the CIA Project Hive)
  • Weeping Angel - the User Guide for CIA's "Weeping Angel" tool - an implant designed for Samsung F Series Smart Televisions
  • Scribbles - the documentation and source code for CIA's "Scribbles" project, a document-watermarking preprocessing system
  • Archimedes - a tool used by the CIA to attack a computer inside a Local Area Network
  • After Midnight and Assassin - "AfterMidnight" and "Assassin", two CIA malware frameworks for the Microsoft Windows platform
  • Athena - remote beacon and loader capabilities on target computers running Microsoft Windows
  • Pandemic - a persistent implant for Microsoft Windows machines that share files in a local network
  • Cherry Blossom - a means of monitoring the Internet activity of and performing software exploits on Targets of interest
  • Brutal Kangaroo - targets closed networks by air gap jumping using thumbdrives
  • Elsa - a geo-location malware for WiFi-enabled devices
  • Outlaw Country - argets computers running the Linux operating system
  • BothanSpy - designed to intercept and exfiltrate SSH credentials
  • Highrise - an Android application designed to provide a redirector function for SMS
  • UCL/Raytheon - documents from the CIA contractor Raytheon Blackbird Technologies for the "UMBRAGE Component Library" project
  • Imperial - documents from the Imperial project of the CIA
  • Dumbo - enabling a way to suspend processes utilizing webcams and corrupt any video recordings
  • CouchPotato - the User Guide for the CoachPotato project of the CIA, a remote tool for collection against RTSP/H.264 video streams
  • ExpressLane - documents from the cyber operations the CIA conducts against liaison services - which includes NSA, DHS and FBI.
  • Angelfire - a persistent framework used to infect Microsoft Windows systems
  • Protego - four secret documents from the Protego project of the CIA, along with 37 related manuals

References

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