WikiLeaks has a growing issue that could easily lead to its downfall, and that problem is its leader, Julian Assange. As time goes on, he is becoming the persona of the organization, and as this happens he becomes more of a target, and more of a threat to the organization’s stability. There are rumors of death threats and assassination plots, on top on the fact that he is wanted in Sweden for what he has claimed to be trumped-up charges. Those that seek to stop WikiLeaks are increasingly attacking Assange directly, and focusing less on those behind the scenes or the organization itself. One outspoken leader doesn’t make the organization.
Assange has become a threat to WikiLeaks not because of the attacks against him, but because people see him as WikiLeaks. If he was arrested today, how much faith would there be in WikiLeaks? I am sure that they have developed contingency plans should something happen to Assange, but those plans will likely do little to promote faith and trust, or to calm the media firestorm that would surely erupt.
For WikiLeaks to survive the trials that it will soon face, they need to ensure that there is a strong governance body in place controlling the organization. For their mission to continue, they must become more than just Julian Assange to the public. Trust is the key asset for WikiLeaks, and if that trust is lost, then few will accept the authenticity of their releases; they must take steps to preserve that trust.
I’ve been a (fairly quiet) critic of WikiLeaks for a long time, the core of the mission I agree with – information should be free, and should be preserved – but the implementation is deeply flawed. But then, that’s not really news is it? Two and half years ago when I last wrote about WikiLeaks, I pointed out that Julian Assange was the organization’s biggest problem. So what do we have today?
ALERT: Julian Assange has requested political asylum and is under the protection of the Ecuadorian embassy in London http://t.co/bz4O9bjF — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 19, 2012 The news that Julian Assange has asked Ecuador for political asylum is flooding twitter as his supporters do their best to attract attention to his cause, and rally everyone they can to contact Ecuador’s embassy in London to urge them to grant Assange’s request. While I’ve watched the Assange case since before the first allegations came out of Sweden – that’s not my interest here, my interest is in what Ecuador could do if they wanted to.
The information security industry, and more significantly, the hacking community are prolific producers of incredibly valuable research; yet much of it is lost to most of those that need to see it. Unlike academic research which is typically published in journals (with varying degrees of openness), most research conducted within the community is presented at a conference – and occasionally with an accompanying blog post. There is no journal, no central source that this knowledge goes to; if you aren’t at the right conference, or follow the right people on Twitter, there’s a great chance you’ll never know it happened.
That researchers from Kaspersky Lab uncovered malware that uses hard-drive firmware has now been throughly discussed — perhaps too much for some people. It’s not exactly Earth-shattering news either, the idea has been discussed for years, and has been publicly demonstrated. Brandon Wilson and I were even working proof of concept for SSD controllers to demonstrate this based on our BadUSB work.
This isn’t about that story, exactly. This is about paranoia, and how it has changed over the last few years — and even the last few months.
It’s been two weeks since news broke about the NSA collecting massive amounts of data from Verizon; and likely everybody else. There’s also PRISM – whatever the hell that is – it seems there’s no agreement on that, and I doubt there will be anytime soon. What really matters here though, is we have proof that people are watching – and if it’s happening in the US, it’s probably happening everywhere else.
