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How does this guy get these cables? Are those cables routed through a single node, where this guy got it? If so, How it is possible? I mean, how that single point came under the control of Julian Assange? If not, then how did he get them? Didn't they encrypted?

Thanks a lot.

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Hi @Kugathasan, welcome to the site! We had to close this question, since it calls for speculation, and anyway its not really a helpful question, as per the FAQ. As phrased, it's not even a security question... – AviD♦ Jun 14 '11 at 18:51
A good place to start building a good question related to this is One Year After Collateral Murder Release, DOD’s Networks Are Still Glaring Security Problem | Emptywheel – nealmcb Jun 14 '11 at 18:59
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I do not see why anyone would vote this down. It is a legitimate question of how what should have been one of the most secure networks in the world was penetrated and senistive information was released. – Chad Jun 15 '11 at 12:47
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@chad I didn't downvote it, but I did vote to close, and I understand the concern that the question as asked reflects very little homework done, and we discourage argumentative and misleading questions that lead to a waste of time. Google will quickly show lots of background on this as evidenced by the article I already noted. But I'd welcome a good non-argumentative question on what is known about SIPRnet, and what lessons can be learned by the rest of us. It could either be a new question, or a reworded one here that leads to it being reopened. – nealmcb Jun 15 '11 at 17:44

closed as too localized by Iszi, nealmcb, AviD♦ Jun 14 '11 at 18:44

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, see the FAQ.

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

The long answer is quite complicated, and up for legal discussion.

The short answer is: He (Wikileaks) asked for them, and someone sent them.

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So, didn't he steal in the middle? – Kugathasan Abimaran Jun 14 '11 at 17:22
Not according to the information that's available. – Ori Jun 14 '11 at 17:24
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"He (Wikileaks) asked for them, and someone sent them." Only in so much as he asked that if anyone had documents that any goverment would like to cover up send them. I have never seen anything that said he asked for the specific documents or more specifically anything that made the US look bad. – Chad Jun 14 '11 at 17:54
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Yeah @chad I agree, wikileaks is just an intermediary for the 'leak' and there is case-law where newspapers are allowed to do this sort of thing (in fact they are key players in the publishing of this material). – Andrew Russell Jun 15 '11 at 1:16
up vote 0 down vote

These cables were made available to military Intel people in theory to support anti terror operations. The commanders of the Intel units failed to properly monitor and catch that highly classified and top secret material was being down loaded enmass, and then removed from the secure facilities. The files were at some point reportedly on Bit Torrent in an Unredacted format where wikileaks staff downloaded them.

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Some of the material was Top Secret No FORN. A majority of it was simply classified. Along with various classification in between – Chad Jun 15 '11 at 12:48
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@chad Here is another source: wikileaks have no top secret material « Niqnaq. Can you provide a source for the assertion that there was top secret info? Including which document was so classified? – nealmcb Jun 15 '11 at 15:08
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But you claimed "top secret" info, which is quite different, and an entirely different military network is used for it. – nealmcb Jun 15 '11 at 15:47
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@Chad, nealmcb is entirely right. There is a huge difference between secret and top secret. SECRET is secret, not top secret. These differences matter. (It's not just a matter of "making someone happy"; it is about accuracy.) – D.W. Jun 16 '11 at 17:59
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