PayPal Freezes WikiLeaks Account

In potentially the most significant attack on WikiLeaks to date, PayPal on Friday froze the account of the German foundation accepting donations for the secret spilling website, claiming that WikiLeaks was in violation of PayPal’s terms of service.

“PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity,” reads a statement on PayPal’s website. “We’ve notified the account holder of this action.”

Most of the over $1 million in contributions WikiLeaks has drawn in the last year have come through its PayPal account, which belongs to the Wau Holland Foundation, a German non-profit group that manages the bulk of WikiLeaks’ money.

Attempting to donate to Wau Holland though PayPal on Friday night produced the message “This recipient is currently unable to receive money.”

PayPal’s move comes amid mounting U.S. pressure against WikiLeaks over its cache of over 250,000 State Department diplomatic cables. Struggling with denial-of-service attacks on its servers earlier this week, WikiLeaks moved to Amazon’s EC2 cloud-based data-storage service, only to be summarily booted off on Wednesday. Then on Thursday its domain-name service provider, EveryDNS, stopped resolving WikiLeaks.org, after the DNS provider was battered by the DoS attacks.

There was an element of theater to WikiLeaks’ supposed struggles against electronic censorship this week. WikiLeaks kept its domain hosting at EveryDNS even after the company gave WikiLeaks notice that it was pulling the plug. And though WikiLeaks has no shortage of hosting options outside of U.S. influence, founder Julian Assange selected Amazon instead, in what he described Friday as a test of the company’s commitment to free speech.

The attack on WikiLeaks’ money flow, in contrast, is the real deal, and has the potential to genuinely impact the organization.

PayPal’s public statement doesn’t detail the “illegal activity” WikiLeaks promotes, but presumably it’s the leaking of classified information. Sometimes such leaks are indeed illegal. And sometimes classified leaks — legal or not — reveal warrantless wiretapping of Americans, secret CIA prison networks,and massive government waste hidden in black budgets. The reasoning PayPal offers for its newfound intolerance for WikiLeaks would seem to apply equally well to the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Tags: ,
Back to top

WikiLeaks Attacks Reveal Surprising, Avoidable Vulnerabilities

Some online service providers are in the cross hairs this week for allegedly abandoning WikiLeaks after it published secret U.S. diplomatic cables and drew retaliatory technical, political and legal attacks. But the secret-spilling site’s woes may be attributable in part to its own technical and administrative missteps as well as outside attempts at censorship.

Struggling with denial-of-service attacks on its servers earlier this week, WikiLeaks moved to Amazon’s EC2 cloud-based data-storage service only to be summarily booted off on Wednesday, ostensibly for violations of Amazon’s terms of service. Then on Thursday its domain-name service provider, EveryDNS, stopped resolving WikiLeaks.org, amid a new DoS attack apparently aimed at the DNS provider.

While WikiLeaks was clearly targeted, its weak countermeasures drew criticism from network engineers. They questioned its use of a free DNS service such as EveryDNS, as well as other avoidable errors that seem to clash with WikiLeaks’ reputation as a tech-savvy and cautious enterprise hardened to withstand any concerted technical attack on its systems.

“If they wanted to help users get past their DNS problems, they could tweet for assistance, tweet their IP addy and ask to be re-tweeted, ask owners of authorities to set up wikileaks.$FOO.com to ‘crowd source’ their name, etc.,” observed one poster to the mailing list for the North American Network Operating Group. “So at the very least, they are guilty of not being imaginative.”

“IMHO it is a gambit to ask for money,” wrote another.

Continue Reading “WikiLeaks Attacks Reveal Surprising, Avoidable Vulnerabilities” »

Tags: ,
Back to top

Video Barbie in FBI Cross Hairs

A Barbie doll tricked out with a video camera concealed in her necklace could be used by predators to create child pornography, warns the FBI in a recent cybercrime alert.

In the alert, mistakenly released to the press, the FBI expressed concern that the toy’s camera, which can capture 30 minutes of video and rivals a Canon 7D in quality (see above), could be used to lure children and surreptitiously film child pornography. Barbie and other dolls have been used in the past by sexual predators to attract victims.

According to ABC News, which obtained a copy of the memo, the FBI appears to have opened an investigation into the doll.

Mattel, the maker of Barbie Video Girl, noted in a statement that the FBI didn’t say it knew of any cases where the Barbie camera had been used for such nefarious purposes.

But a sheriff’s spokesman told ABC News that the FBI alert will be helpful for drawing attention to investigators collecting evidence at a crime scene.

“When we’re doing a search warrant looking for media that a child pornographer may have used, we’re gonna have to put Barbie on the list just like any other cameras [and] computers,” said Sgt. John Urquhart from the King County Sheriff’s Department in Washington state.

Tags:
Back to top

Viacom Says YouTube Ruling Will ‘Completely Destroy’ Copyright

Viacom appealed Friday its unsuccessful $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google’s YouTube in a case testing the depths of copyright-infringement protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

Viacom, on behalf of its MTV, Comedy Central, Black Entertainment Television, Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon units, is seeking to overturn a June ruling that, if it survives, is a boon for internet freedom — and a decision that would make it more difficult for rights holders to protect their works.

The media concern told the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday that, if the lower decision stands, “it would radically transform the functioning of the copyright system and severely impair, if not completely destroy, (.pdf) the value of many copyrighted creations.”

The June 23 decision at issue by U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton of New York said internet companies, even if they know they are hosting infringing material, are immune from copyright liability if they promptly remove works at a rights holder’s request — under what is known as a takedown notice.

Continue Reading “Viacom Says YouTube Ruling Will ‘Completely Destroy’ Copyright” »

Tags: , ,
Back to top

Lieberman Introduces Anti-WikiLeaks Legislation

Senator Joseph Lieberman and other lawmakers on Thursday introduced legislation that would make it a federal crime for anyone to publish the name of a U.S. intelligence source, in a direct swipe at the secret-spilling website WikiLeaks.

“The recent dissemination by Wikileaks of thousands of State Department cables and other documents is just the latest example of how our national security interests, the interests of our allies, and the safety of government employees and countless other individuals are jeopardized by the illegal release of classified and sensitive information,” said Lieberman in a written statement.

“This legislation will help hold people criminally accountable who endanger these sources of information that are vital to protecting our national security interests,” he continued.

The so-called SHIELD Act (Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination) would amend a section of the Espionage Act that already forbids publishing classified information on U.S. cryptographic secrets or overseas communications intelligence — i.e., wiretapping. The bill would extend that prohibition to information on HUMINT, human intelligence, making it a crime to publish information “concerning the identity of a classified source or informant of an element of the intelligence community of the United States,” or “concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government” if such publication is prejudicial to U.S. interests.

Leaking such information in the first place is already a crime, so the measure is aimed squarely at publishers.

Continue Reading “Lieberman Introduces Anti-WikiLeaks Legislation” »

Tags:
Back to top

Feds Warrantlessly Tracking Americans’ Credit Cards in Real Time

Federal law enforcement agencies have been tracking Americans in real-time using credit cards, loyalty cards and travel reservations without getting a court order, a new document released under a government sunshine request shows.

The document, obtained by security researcher Christopher Soghoian, explains how so-called “Hotwatch” orders allow for real-time tracking of individuals in a criminal investigation via credit card companies, rental car agencies, calling cards, and even grocery store loyalty programs. The revelation sheds a little more light on the Justice Department’s increasing power and willingness to surveil Americans with little to no judicial or Congressional oversight.

For credit cards, agents can get real-time information on a person’s purchases by writing their own subpoena, followed up by a order from a judge that the surveillance not be disclosed. Agents can also go the traditional route — going to a judge, proving probable cause and getting a search warrant — which means the target will eventually be notified they were spied on.

The document suggests that the normal practice is to ask for all historical records on an account or individual from a credit card company, since getting stored records is generally legally easy. Then the agent sends a request for “Any and all records and information relating directly or indirectly to any and all ongoing and future transactions or events relating to any and all of the following person(s), entitities, account numbers, addresses and other matters…” That gets them a live feed of transaction data.

Continue Reading “Feds Warrantlessly Tracking Americans’ Credit Cards in Real Time” »

Tags:
Back to top

Prosecutors Dismiss Xbox-Modding Case Mid-Trial

LOS ANGELES — Federal authorities in the first-of-its-kind game-console–modding criminal trial abruptly dropped their prosecution here Thursday, “based on fairness and justice.”

“The government has decided to dismiss the indictment,” prosecutor Allen Chiu told the judge shortly before the jury was to be seated on the third day of trial.

The announcement came a day after a whirlwind of legal jockeying in the case against defendant Matthew Crippen, a 28-year-old Southern California man. The government charged that Crippen, a hotel car-parking manager, ran a small business from his Anaheim home modifying the firmware on Xbox 360 optical drives to make them capable of running pirated or unauthorized games.

It was the nation’s first jury trial to test the anti-circumvention provisions of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act as applied to game consoles. The law makes it a crime to offer a product or service that circumvents a technological measure designed to protect copyright material. Each of the two charges carried a maximum five years.

“It still has not hit me yet,” Crippen said outside court, moments after Chiu dismissed the indictment.

U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez had blasted the prosecution’s case Wednesday, prompting a brief recess for prosecutors to decide whether they would forge ahead. The prosecution’s decision to continue would come back to haunt them as the government’s first witness ultimately unraveled their case.

Continue Reading “Prosecutors Dismiss Xbox-Modding Case Mid-Trial” »

Tags: , , ,
Back to top

No Deal in Xbox Modding Case, Trial Begins

Matthew Crippen

LOS ANGELES — Federal authorities in the first-of-its-kind Xbox modding trial opened their prosecution here Wednesday, hours after the judge called a recess to give the government time to reach a plea deal or dismiss the case.

The government decided to forge ahead in the landmark trial after U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez gave the government a little breathing room on the standard of proof required to convict defendant Matthew Crippen on two counts of breaching the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The 28-year-old Southern California man is accused of modding Xboxes — a hack circumventing technological measures designed to block pirated or unauthorized games from being played. It is the first such jury trial of its kind. Each of the two charges carries a maximum five years.

“After consulting with the front office as well as the Department of Justice, the office has decided to move forward,” prosecutor Allen Chiu told Judge Gutierrez after a three-hour recess.

“The government,” Chiu added, “believes it has the evidence to prove each and every element beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The recess earlier in the day, as opening statements were to begin, came as the judge berated the prosecution on a number of fronts — from alleged unlawful behavior by government witnesses to proposed jury instructions that would almost certainly have resulted in a conviction.

In the end, the judge said the government must show that Crippen knew he was breaking the law — an acceptable position to the government that earlier had argued it did not have to prove that.

The defense maintained that, if the government proved Crippen circumvented copyright controls, the government must show that Crippen knew he was violating the DMCA.

The government said it would have dropped the case if that more onerous standard was required.

Toward the government’s end of proving that Crippen knew what he was doing was illegal, prosecutors put on the stand an Entertainment Software Association private investigator who told jurors that he paid Crippen $60 to modify a console at Crippen’s residence in Southern California in 2008.

“Hey, I’m hoping you can get this thing modded for me,” Rosario described the verbal encounter ahead of the transaction. “He reassured me that it would be OK. He said, ‘Not a problem.’”

Continue Reading “No Deal in Xbox Modding Case, Trial Begins” »

Tags: ,
Back to top

Salaries of WikiLeaks Staffers to Be Revealed in New Report

Expenses and salary earnings for paid WikiLeaks staff will be revealed for the first time in a report expected to be published by the end of this year, according to Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesman for the secret-spilling organization.

Hrafnsson, speaking Wednesday in London on a panel discussion at the Frontline Club, said that the Wau Holland Foundation — the Berlin-based non-profit that handles most of the money donated to WikiLeaks — will finally be detailing how WikiLeaks has spent funds from the more than $1 million it has raised in the last year. The report has been expected since August.

“At year end [Wau Holland] will give a breakdown of how they have reimbursed our costs and the staff salaries of people who are getting paid,” Hrafnsson said. It’s the first indication that some WikiLeaks staffers have been receiving salary payments for their work.

The report, if complete, should also detail what money WikiLeaks has paid out to date for the defense fund of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who confessed in online chats to a former hacker that he downloaded classified documents from Army networks — including 260,000 U.S. State Department cables — and passed them to WikiLeaks. Manning is currently being held at the U.S. Marine Corps brig at Quantico, Virginia.

Continue Reading “Salaries of WikiLeaks Staffers to Be Revealed in New Report” »

Tags: , ,
Back to top

Xbox-Modding Judge Berates Prosecution, Puts Trial on Hold

Xbox modding defendant Matthew Crippen (David Kravets/Wired.com)

LOS ANGELES — Opening statements in the first-of-its kind Xbox 360 criminal hacking trial were delayed here Wednesday after a federal judge unleashed a 30-minute tirade at prosecutors in open court, saying he had “serious concerns about the government’s case.”

“I really don’t understand what we’re doing here,” U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez roared from the bench.

Gutierrez slammed the prosecution over everything from alleged unlawful behavior by government witnesses, to proposed jury instructions harmful to the defense. When the verbal assault finally subsided, federal prosecutors asked for a recess to determine whether they would offer the defendant a deal, dismiss or move forward with the case that was slated to become the first jury trial of its type. A jury was seated Tuesday.

Among the judge’s host of complaints against the government was his alarm that prosecutors would put on two witnesses who may have broken the law.

One is Entertainment Software Association investigator Tony Rosario, who secretly video-recorded defendant Matthew Crippen allegedly performing the Xbox mod in Crippen’s Los Angeles suburban house. The defense argues that making the recording violates California privacy law. The other witness is Microsoft security employee Ken McGrail, who analyzed the two consoles Crippen allegedly altered. McGrail admitted that he himself had modded Xboxes in college.

“Maybe two of the four government witnesses committed crimes,” the judge said from the bench. “I think it is relevant and the jury is going to hear about it –- both crimes.”

The government had fought to keep the witness conduct a secret from the jury.

Continue Reading “Xbox-Modding Judge Berates Prosecution, Puts Trial on Hold” »

Tags: , ,
Back to top
« OLDER POSTS
See more Threat Level