by Steve Ragan - Dec 4 2010, 08:10
Recap: WikiLeaks faces more heat in the wake of cablegate
It’s been a long week for the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. Problems started to mount after Amazon and EveryDNS forced them to shuffle their hosting. While this was happening, they also had to face political posturing and arrest warrants. The truth can be a dangerous and wonderful thing.
WikiLeaks had moved to Amazon after their site fell victim to a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. The attack, peaking at 2 to 4 Gbps, was said to have originated from a single source. This source, Th3J35t3r, a self-titled ‘Hacktivist for good’, has been silent since word of his actions spread in the media.
The move to Amazon helped WikiLeaks remain online, but that was only the start of the problem. A day later politics entered the picture. Senator Joseph Lieberman is said to have called Amazon on December 1, to complain about their hosting of Wikileaks.
The assumption that Lieberman caused Amazon to boot WikiLeaks comes from a statement the Senator released that said in part, “After reading press reports that Amazon was hosting the Wikileaks website, Committee staff contacted Amazon Tuesday for an explanation.”
“[Amazon’s] decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material. I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them,” Lieberman’s statement added.
The French minister for industry, energy and digital economy, Eric Besson, seems to have jumped on Lieberman’s request. Reuters reported that he wrote a letter to CGIET, the agency that looks after internet use in France, looking for the means to block hosting for WikiLeaks in France. Shortly after getting the boot from Amazon, WikiLeaks moved to France’s OVH for hosting.
“The situation is unacceptable. France cannot host websites that violate diplomatic relations secrecy and endanger persons protected by diplomatic confidentiality. We cannot host sites that have been called criminal and rejected by other countries on the basis of harm to national rights,” Besson’s letter stated.
Amazon disputes the claims that they folded to political pressure, calling the reports “inaccurate”. Likewise, the reports that Amazon kicked WikiLeaks off their services due to DDOS attacks were inaccurate as well. “There were indeed large-scale DDOS attacks, but they were successfully defended against,” Amazon said.
“AWS does not pre-screen its customers, but it does have terms of service that must be followed. WikiLeaks was not following them….For example, our terms of service state that ‘you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content… that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.’,” Amazon said in a statement.
“It’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren’t putting innocent people in jeopardy…when companies or people go about securing and storing large quantities of data that isn’t rightfully theirs, and publishing this data without ensuring it won’t injure others, it’s a violation of our terms of service, and folks need to go operate elsewhere.”
Recap: WikiLeaks faces more heat in the wake of cablegate
It’s been a long week for the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. Problems started to mount after Amazon and EveryDNS forced them to shuffle their hosting. While this was happening, they also had to face political posturing and arrest warrants. The truth can be a dangerous and wonderful thing.
WikiLeaks had moved to Amazon after their site fell victim to a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. The attack, peaking at 2 to 4 Gbps, was said to have originated from a single source. This source, Th3J35t3r, a self-titled ‘Hacktivist for good’, has been silent since word of his actions spread in the media.
The move to Amazon helped WikiLeaks remain online, but that was only the start of the problem. A day later politics entered the picture. Senator Joseph Lieberman is said to have called Amazon on December 1, to complain about their hosting of Wikileaks.
The assumption that Lieberman caused Amazon to boot WikiLeaks comes from a statement the Senator released that said in part, “After reading press reports that Amazon was hosting the Wikileaks website, Committee staff contacted Amazon Tuesday for an explanation.”
“[Amazon’s] decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material. I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them,” Lieberman’s statement added.
The French minister for industry, energy and digital economy, Eric Besson, seems to have jumped on Lieberman’s request. Reuters reported that he wrote a letter to CGIET, the agency that looks after internet use in France, looking for the means to block hosting for WikiLeaks in France. Shortly after getting the boot from Amazon, WikiLeaks moved to France’s OVH for hosting.
“The situation is unacceptable. France cannot host websites that violate diplomatic relations secrecy and endanger persons protected by diplomatic confidentiality. We cannot host sites that have been called criminal and rejected by other countries on the basis of harm to national rights,” Besson’s letter stated.
Amazon disputes the claims that they folded to political pressure, calling the reports “inaccurate”. Likewise, the reports that Amazon kicked WikiLeaks off their services due to DDOS attacks were inaccurate as well. “There were indeed large-scale DDOS attacks, but they were successfully defended against,” Amazon said.
“AWS does not pre-screen its customers, but it does have terms of service that must be followed. WikiLeaks was not following them….For example, our terms of service state that ‘you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content… that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.’,” Amazon said in a statement.
“It’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren’t putting innocent people in jeopardy…when companies or people go about securing and storing large quantities of data that isn’t rightfully theirs, and publishing this data without ensuring it won’t injure others, it’s a violation of our terms of service, and folks need to go operate elsewhere.”
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