WikiWars: blow by blow

December 14

Number of Wikileaks mirrors: 1885 (unchanged from yesterday).

Number of Wikileaks released: 1344 of 251,287 (0.534 percent).

Attempts by counter hackers to bring down the Operation Payback collective are splintering the group but also making it more dangerous and difficult to track by removing the central command and control underpinning their attacks, Panda Labs says "it's pure anarchy".

Black hat search engine optimisers are surfing the wave of interest in Wikileaks to funnel unwitting internet users to malware sites, Panda Labs says.

Amazon's response to Wikileaks threatened the future of cloud computing, Joseph Reger, the chief Technology officer for Fujitsu Technology Solutions told The Wall Street Journal.

This is bad news for the new IT paradigm of cloud computing. If a provider can terminate its service that easily, then it is doing exactly what skeptics expect, putting the security and availability of cloud services into question.

US space agency NASA was given the right to manage its own cybersecurity using real-time intelligence and write an information security awareness education syllabus. NASA was one of Assange's first targets as a teen hacker, which he boasted he had the run of for years.

Hackers from 4chan, a group connected to those who took out credit card companies in retribution at their withdrawing support from Wikileaks, overnight released a 497MB file containing the login credentials, source code, chat logs and other confidential information of the Gawker blog empire. To learn if your credentials were stolen, check out the Google Fusion table and follow the instructions.

In the YouTube video above, US Department of State assistant secretary for human rights Michael Posner defends its government's pursuit of Assange at the opening of International Human Rights Day, saying there was no free speech right to shout "fire in a crowded theatre" (7min20sec).

The University of Twente in the Netherlands throws cold water over the notion that Anonymous members are incognito. Researchers discovered the "hacktivists are easy traceable, and therefore anything but anonymous". The Low Orbit Ion Cannon software they use are "relatively simple and unveil the identity of the attacker".

If hacktivists use this tool directly from their own machines, instead of via anonymisation networks such as Tor, the Internet address of the attacker is included in every Internet message being transmitted. In the tools no sophisticated techniques are used. The attack technique can be compared to overwhelming someone with letters, but putting your address at the back of the envelop. Hacktivists may not be aware that international data retention laws require that commercial Internet providers store data regarding Internet usage for at least six months. This means that hacktivists can still be traced easily after the attacks are over.

US counter hackers flying under the Operation Fightback flag yesterday started a patriotic assault on Anonymous forces, hindering and ultimately splintering and dividing the pro-Wikileaks collective's efforts.