wikileaks - The Art of the Prank

February 12, 2011December 15, 2023

Anonymous Revenge

Anonymous takes revenge on security firm
by Gareth Beavis
Techradar.com

HBGary gets hit with full range of electronic threats

Anonymous, the group behind the DDoS attacks to major websites in support of Wikileaks, have apparently hacked into the US security firm that claims to have identified its leaders.

HBGary’s CEO Aaron Barr was the subject of the attacks, which hacked his Twitter account and apparently released his address, social security number and mobile phone number.

It gets a lot worse for the security firm, as Anonymous claims to have access to everything from all financial records to data drives, as well as offering a full torrent of all emails and gaining access to the main HBGary front page.

We shall not fail, we shall not falter

According to the Guardian, the online group put up the following phrase on the front page before it was removed and a placeholder used instead:

“You’re nothing compared to Anonymous. You have little to no security knowledge. Your business thrives off charging ridiculous prices for simple things like NMAPs, and you don’t deserve praise or even recognition as security experts.”

“If you swing a sword of malice into Anonymous’ innards, we will simply engulf it. You cannot break us, you cannot harm us, even though you have clearly tried.”

However, the terror doesn’t stop there – Barr’s iPad was also wiped in the attack, according to the online group. We can only hope he backed up his Angry Birds scores somewhere remote.

Cyberactivists warned of arrest, uk.finance.yahoo.com

thanks V.Vale

December 15, 2010December 15, 2023

Sustain the First Amendment: Support WikiLeaks

Submitted by Deborah Thomas of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting): Stand with Daniel Ellsberg, Barbara Ehrenreich, Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky and others! Sign the petition to support Wikileaks.

As journalists, activists, artists, scholars and citizens, we condemn the array of threats and attacks on the journalist organization WikiLeaks. After the website’s decision, in collaboration with several international media organizations, to publish hundreds of classified State Department diplomatic cables, many pundits, commentators and prominent U.S. politicians have called for harsh actions to be taken to shut down WikiLeaks’ operations.

Major corporations like Amazon.com, PayPal, MasterCard and Visa have acted to disrupt the group’s ability to publish. U.S. legal authorities and others have repeatedly suggested, without providing any evidence, that WikiLeaks’ posting of government secrets is a form of criminal behavior–or that at the very least, such activity should be made illegal. “To the extent there are gaps in our laws,” Attorney General Eric Holder proclaimed (11/29/10), “we will move to close those gaps.”

Throughout this episode, journalists and prominent media outlets have largely refrained from defending WikiLeaks’ rights to publish material of considerable news value and obvious public interest. It appears that these media organizations are hesitant to stand up for this particular media outlet’s free speech rights because they find the supposed political motivations behind WikiLeaks’ revelations objectionable.

But the test for one’s commitment to freedom of the press is not whether one agrees with what a media outlet publishes or the manner in which it is published. Continue reading “Sustain the First Amendment: Support WikiLeaks”

December 12, 2010December 15, 2023

Single Most Damning Wikileaks Cable

From Huffington Post, December 10, 2010:

WikiLeaks Rickroll’d!

It’s nearly the end of 2010, so if you’ve made it this far without being Rickroll’d, we applaud you. The Internet prank (of the decade?) that consists of getting an unsuspecting person to hear the Rick Astly classic has been carried out in many forms, but we’ve never seen it done on something quite as important as this. Yes, it appears even the WikiLeaks cables aren’t immune to the meme that won’t quit. Is this real? No. But that doesn’t stop it from being one of the best Rickrolls we’ve ever seen. (via Buzzfeed)

December 3, 2010December 15, 2023

Latest Wikileak: Sec Clinton’s Draft Speech

Submitted by Marco Ceglie:

This just in from The Other 98%: Hillary Clinton”s original draft of her statement denouncing WikiLeak”s release of Diplomatic cables

December 2, 2010December 15, 2023

A Personal Correspondence from Julian Assange

Editor’s note: The Art of the Prank is in receipt of previously unpublished content from the vast archive of WikiLeaks documents. We feel we have an obligation, in the pursuit of freedom of information, to publish these excerpts as we receive them. We will continue to post them as they are sent to us. We realize the danger Julian Assange faces. We can honestly say we do not know where he is.

Joey;

Thank you for your offer to publish some of the more controversial classified U.S. government documents WikiLeaks brought into the public domain on the 28th of November 2010. Although The New York Times and the Guardian began publishing some of the 251,287 WikiLeaks documents, The New York Times has bowed to government pressure and decided to withhold some passages and in some cases, entire cables whose disclosure, they claim, could compromise American intelligence efforts and even upset U.S. domestic political stability.

Some of the documents being withheld which will give the world unprecedented insight into the US Government’s foreign and domestic activities, appear to be benign except as to cause some embarrassment to certain public figures. One cable withheld is about Silvio Berlusconi, who, while contemplating a run for the Italian presidency, took a medical holiday in Luzern, Switzerland to have a very large “OMERTA” tattoo removed from his back by surgical laser. Also, he and Vladimir Putin have been described by an aid as having had an alcohol and drug fueled “boys night,” shooting out the windows of the UK Consul General’s empty parked Daimler with automatic weapons the pair borrowed from their bodyguards on a Berlusconi Moscow visit.

Sarah Palin attempted to secretly adopt two Downs Syndrome infants through an Asian adoption agency. The Chinese balked when Palin revealed that she needed stand-ins for Trig, Continue reading “A Personal Correspondence from Julian Assange”