WikiLeaks is an international organization that publishes leaked documents, founded in 2006. It is run by Julian Assange and aims to ensure whistleblowers are not prosecuted for sharing sensitive information. WikiLeaks analyzes submissions before release and has published numerous leaks over the years, including the Collateral Murder video, Afghan and Iraq war logs, and US diplomatic cables. It has faced criticism and attempts to shut it down through denial of service attacks and cutting of funding sources, but continues operating through decentralized hosting and anonymous donations.

1. Thet
Aung

2. What is WiKiLeaks
WikiLeaks is an international new media
non-profit organization that publishes
submissions of otherwise unavailable documents
from anonymous news sources and leaks.

3. Who run this?
 The Guardian newspaper describes
Julian Assange as
“an Australian Internet activist, as its
director.”

4. Goal
 To ensure that whistleblowers and
journalists are not jailed for emailing
sensitive or classified documents

5. History
 First appeared on the Internet in
December 2006
 January 2007, the website stated that
it had over 1.2 million leaked
documents

6. Administration
 Revenue stream is donations
 Planning to add an auction model to
sell early access to documents.
 Receives no money for personnel
costs
 Only for hardware, travelling and
bandwidth

7. Leaks
First document in December 2006
 Apparent Somali assassination order
 A decision to assassinate government
officials signed by Sheikh Hassan
Dahir Aweys

8. Leaks
April 2010
 Video from a 2007 incident in which
Iraqi civilians and journalists were
killed by U.S. forces, on a website
called Collateral Murder.

9. Leaks
July 2010
 Afghan War Diary, a compilation of
more than 76,900 documents about
the War in Afghanistan not previously
available for public review.

10. Leaks
October 2010
 A package of almost 400,000
documents called the Iraq War Logs in
coordination with major commercial
media organisations.

11. Leaks
November 2010,
 Releasing U.S. State department
diplomatic cables.

12. Technology used by
WiKiLeaks
 MediaWiKi
 Freenet
 Tor
 PGP

13. Technical changes
 First user-editable wiki site
 Traditional publication model
 No longer accepts either user comments or
edits.
 Multiple servers and different domain names
 Number of denial-of-service attacks
 Disconnection from different Domain Name
System (DNS) providers.

14. DDOS

15. Hosting
 An uncensorable system for
untraceable mass document leaking
 Hosted by PRQ, a Sweden-based
company
 “Highly secure, no-questions-asked
hosting services”

16. Hosting
 Swedish constitution, which gives the
information providers total legal protection.
 It is forbidden according to Swedish law for
any administrative authority to make inquiries
about the sources of any type of newspaper.
 These laws, and the hosting by PRQ, make it
difficult to take WikiLeaks offline.

17. Hosting
17 August 2010
 Swedish Pirate Party will be hosting and managing
many of WikiLeaks' new servers.
 The party donates servers and bandwidth to WikiLeaks
without charge.
 Technicians of the party will make sure that the servers
are maintained and working.
 Some servers are hosted in an underground nuclear
bunker in Stockholm.

18. Bulletproof Hosting
 Own servers at undisclosed locations
 Keeps no logs
 Uses military-grade encryption
 Protect sources and other confidential
information.

19. Moving around
 Target of a denial-of-service attack
 Move to Amazon's servers
 Ousted without a public statement
from the company
 Decided to move to OVH in France

20. Moving around
 French government, and OVH legality of
hosting WikiLeaks.
 The court in Lille immediately declined to
force OVH to shut down the WikiLeaks site
 The court in Paris stated it would need more
time to examine the highly technical issue

21. After the US diplomatic cables
leak
 American owned EveryDNS dropped
WikiLeaks from its entries on 2
December 2010
 Citing DDoS attacks that “threatened
the stability of its infrastructure”

22. After the US diplomatic cables
leak
 The Wau Holland Foundation that had
been redirecting donations to WikiLeaks.
 PayPal alleged that the account violated
its “Acceptable Use Policy”, specifically
that it was used for “activities that
encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct
others to engage in illegal activity”

23. After the US diplomatic cables
leak
 6 December, the Swiss bank, PostFinance
announced that it had frozen the assets of
Assange that it holds, totalling 31,000 euros
 On the same day, MasterCard announced that “it
is taking action to ensure that WikiLeaks can no
longer accept MasterCard-branded products”,
adding “MasterCard rules prohibit customers
from directly or indirectly engaging in or
facilitating any action that is illegal”
 The next day, Visa Inc. announced it was
suspending payments to WikiLeaks, pending
“further investigations”

24. After the US diplomatic cables
leak
 Hundreds of mirrors of the WikiLeaks site appeared
 Anonymous group of internet activists, called on supporters to
attack the websites of companies who do not support
WikiLeaks.
 Operation Payback
 The Associated Free Press reported that attempts to shut
down the wikileaks.org
 The site surviving via the so-called Streisand effect, whereby
attempts to censor information online leads to it being
replicated in many places

25. After the US diplomatic cables
leak
 XIPWIRE established a way to donate
to WikiLeaks, and waived their fees

26. Verification of submissions
 Never released a misattributed
document
 Documents are assessed before
release
 Misleading leaks “are already well-
placed in the mainstream media”

27. Verification of submissions
 Submitted documents are vetted by a
group of five reviewers, with expertise
in different fields
 Assange has the final decision about
the assessment of a document

28. Insurance file
 On 29 July 2010 WikiLeaks added a 1.4 GB
"Insurance File" to the Afghan War Diary
page.
 The file is AES encrypted
 To serve as insurance in case the WikiLeaks
website or its spokesman Julian Assange are
incapacitated
 The passphrase could be published

29. Insurance file
 “If anything happens to Assange or the website,
a key will go out to unlock the files. There would
then be no way to stop the information from
spreading like wildfire because so many people
already have copies.”
 “What most folks are speculating is that the
insurance file contains unreleased information
that would be especially embarrassing to the US
government if it were released.”

30. WikiLeaks has won a number of awards
 2008 Economist magazine New Media
Award
 June 2009, WikiLeaks and Julian
Assange won Amnesty International's UK
Media Award (in the category "New
Media")
 May 2010, the New York Daily News
listed WikiLeaks first in a ranking of
"websites that could totally change the
news".

31. Criticism
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
 “This disclosure is not just an attack
on America's foreign policy interests, it
is an attack on the international
community”

32. Criticism
The President of Iran,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
 “To show concern with Iran by Arab states
was a planned leak by the United States to
discredit his government, though he did not
indicate whether he believed WikiLeaks was
in collusion with the United States or was
simply an unwitting facilitator.”

33. Criticism
Former Canadian government adviser
Tom Flanagan
 “I think Assange should be
assassinated.”

34. Criticism
Russian investigative reporter
Andrei Soldatov
 “WikiLeaks is motivated by anger over
declining funding and resources for
investigative reporting.”

35. Upcoming leaks
 5GB from Bank of America
 Assange commented on the possible
impact of the release that “it could
take down a bank or two.”
 Stock price fell by three percent

36. WikiLeaks had information
 thermo-nuclear device
 which it would release
 if the organisation needs
to defend itself

37. References
 The WikiLeaks Debate
By Rob Grace
http://lawandsecurity.foreignpolicyblogs.co
m
 On the WikiLeaks debate
Benjamin Cunningham
http://blogs.praguepost.com/politics
 WikiLeaks From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks