WikiLeaks getting leaky, names of sources accidentally loosed online

By Jeff Hughes Published August 30, 2011

Apparently, WikiLeaks might not be as secure as was thought. News is circulating that an unredacted version of diplomatic cables from the U.S. State department is available online. These unredacted documents could possibly compromise the identities of assets and agents in countries such as Israel, Jordan, Iran and Afghanistan.

The WikiLeaks leak was first reported last Friday by Der Freitag editor Steffen Kraft who claimed that he found a 1.73 GB file named “cables.csv” containing the raw and confidential cables; he also claimed that the password for the encrypted file was easy to find.

Recommended Videos

Another German paper, Der Spiegal, confirmed the existence of the unredacted cables on Monday. According to Der Spiegal, these cables have been floating around online, unnoticed, since the beginning of this year.

WikiLeaks initially obtained these 250,000 classified documents in spring of 2010, and Assange subsequently concealed them in a password-protected file in a hidden subdirectory of the organization’s server– handing off the password to an “external contact”. In November, many news organizations such as the New York Times, the Guardian and the Mirror were given access to the information for reporting as long as they protected the identities in the cables.

The two pieces eventually found their way online. Assange’s German spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg led a revolt in 2010 to form WikiLeaks competitor OpenLeaks, taking the organization’s server with him. Once Domscheit-Berg found his way back to WikiLeaks, the organization released the archive of the data he took and inadvertantly the encrypted cables file as well. It’s unknown how the password found its way into the wild, but Wired claims that it was neither OpenLeaks nor WikiLeaks’ doing.

WikiLeaks’ official Twitter account is tweeting in response to this issue saying, “WikiLeaks ‘insurance’ files have not been decrypted. All press are currently misreporting. There is an issue, but not that issue.”

Former Digital Trends Contributor

I'm a SF Bay Area-based writer/ninja that loves anything geek, tech, comic, social media or gaming-related.

Computing

How to change margins in Google Docs

Laptop Working from Home

When you create a document in Google Docs, you may need to adjust the space between the edge of the page and the content --- the margins. For instance, many professors have requirements for the margin sizes you must use for college papers.

You can easily change the left, right, top, and bottom margins in Google Docs and have a few different ways to do it.

Computing

What is Microsoft Teams? How to use the collaboration app

A close-up of someone using Microsoft Teams on a laptop for a videoconference.

Online team collaboration is the new norm as companies spread their workforce across the globe. Gone are the days of primarily relying on group emails, as teams can now work together in real time using an instant chat-style interface, no matter where they are.

Using Microsoft Teams affords video conferencing, real-time discussions, document sharing and editing, and more for companies and corporations. It's one of many collaboration tools designed to bring company workers together in an online space. It’s not designed for communicating with family and friends, but for colleagues and clients.

Computing

Microsoft Word vs. Google Docs

A person using a laptop that displays various Microsoft Office apps.

For the last few decades, Microsoft Word has been the de facto standard for word processors across the working world. That's finally starting to shift, and it looks like one of Google's productivity apps is the heir apparent. The company's Google Docs solution (or to be specific, the integrated word processor) is cross-platform and interoperable, automatically syncs, is easily shareable, and perhaps best of all, is free.

However, using Google Docs proves it still has a long way to go before it can match all of Word's features -- Microsoft has been developing its word processor for over 30 years, after all, and millions still use Microsoft Word. Will Google Docs' low barrier to entry and cross-platform functionality win out? Let's break down each word processor in terms of features and capabilities to help you determine which is best for your needs.
How does each word processing program compare?
To put it lightly, Microsoft Word has an incredible advantage over Google Docs in terms of raw technical capability. From relatively humble beginnings in the 1980s, Microsoft has added new tools and options in each successive version. Most of the essential editing tools are available in Google Docs, but users who are used to Word will find it limited.