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Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

So a spammy email in one of the thousands leaked happened to contained malware? And this is newsworthy why?

People here are using this to question Wikileaks integrity but it seems like a minor mistake given the contents of the dump. This has happened before in hacker dumps on a number of occasions but this one isn't even malicious (targeting wikileaks users).

I don't open random zips from spam emails on my machine and I wouldn't from random wikileaks emails without checking them for viruses like the author of this post did.

There is even an argument for Wikileaks to keep the malwared content for research purposes. Maybe just include a warning for those who aren't technically inclined enough to know to not open them in a clean VM.

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> And this is newsworthy why?

Because Wikileaks suggested that when browsers show(ed) a malware warning, it was some kind of conspiracy to censor them. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/756618117875376129

Not to mention it provides further evidence of Wikileaks' complete lack of scruples in vetting their leaks, or really processing it in any way whatsoever. I was largely on board with Wikileaks at first, but kept their mishandling of personal information flagged in my mind for future reference. Since then they've shown basically zero ability to identify and admit mistakes, let alone learn from them.

Not sure who you think works at wikileaks but I assure you no one gets paid to set on the computer and check every single email. I doubt anyone gets paid at all. This isnt some fortune 500 competitor, this is a group of people that are attempting to give power to the commoners.

>but I assure you no one gets paid to set on the computer and check every single email

No one gets paid to to that anywhere, because it's been possible to automate that for a very long time. It doesn't take the resources of a Fortune 500 company, either.

Why should the malware be removed? Going through government email dumps seems like a great way to locate the next stuxnet.

If the detection is as easy to automate as you claim, I'm sure the users antiviruses will take care of it.

>Going through government email dumps seems like a great way to locate the next stuxnet.

Which, if everyone reading these dumps was a researcher looking for the next stuxnet, would be a good point. But by that rationale, we might as well not bother with security anywhere on the internet just to maximize the chance of an interesting infection.

The malware should be removed because it's malware, no other rationale is necessary.

I'm sure the same people who get infected by spam emails on wikileaks are the same people who have already been infected by spam emails in their own inboxes.

It really doesn't seem to make much of a difference.

Do ... do you really consider this a rational reply?

that's indeed news-worthy, but should have made it in to the title than. (or at least in to the article)

> So a spammy email in one of the thousands leaked happened to contained malware? And this is newsworthy why?

Because it's another example of the unconscionable lack of attention to detail that Wikileaks pays when putting out these dumps. Not quite at the level of outing gay Saudis and rape victims (putting them at risk of death), but still just very amateurish.

> still just very amateurish.

Especially considering how long they've been releasing these data dumps.

I guess that is because they don't get paid.

I guess that does technically make them amateurs.

They receive donations, though. Depending on how they receive that okay, this may count as payment for their work.

Is it a lack of attention? I don't think a virus in a collection of leaked emails is a major threat since you'd be a fool to execute it. On the other hand, it might be useful for researchers if the virus was written to specifically target somebody.

It would hardly take any time to run the trove through a virus scanner, and it wouldn't even need someone to be sitting over it nannying it through the process.

A dump should not be tampered with. How are you going to verify what truly is malware and what is not, and how malware in itself is not of importance?

But why? There's no legitimate reason for wikileaks to do that.

My point is that they shouldn't delete the viruses though. Someone going through the archives probably won't open a random executable from a zip file they stumble across, but a security researcher might want to examine the kinds of malware the leak subject might be exposed to. This is especially the case given we have no idea how many parties (and which parties) had access to these servers.

> And this is newsworthy why?

Because we were pro Wiki Leaks when it helped Sanders. We are now anti Wiki Leaks because it helps Trump. It boils down to that.

Can you elaborate? Specifically who 'we' are and how Sanders and Trump were helped.

Even I was able to identify the sarcasm on first sight.

I don't believe it's well-wrought sarcasm then. As well it's exactly the same sort of earnest comment I might see around the net, which is why I asked for elaboration.

Also, can people please label sarcasm with a /s or similar? Sarcasm does not translate well to other languages.

I think this is newsworthy because wikileaks does not maintain the journalistic integrity we expect of them, they never retract their mistakes, nor do they apologize.

>nor do they apologize.

Never apologize, if you apologize you will not be spared, if anything your apology will be used as a confirmation of your guilt and you'll be crucified even more.

Because there's a growing campaign trying to paint Wikileaks as a the "bad guys" (again).

Combine that with the fact that most people don't want Trump to win, so they're automatically on Clinton's side, and with Clinton's deflection of the DNC hack documents that pointed to election rigging towards who hacked the DNC, and that anti-Wikileaks campaign is suddenly a lot more effective.

So now when other sites write about Wikileaks it's usually from the "Here's 3 more ways in which Wikileaks did something bad" angle.

I so wish the U.S. moved to a proportional representation/multi-party system sooner rather than later. I'm so sick and tired of their extremely partisan crap. It seems to make everything worse off. The partisan reality-distortion fields are getting bigger and more powerful than Apple's in the Steve Jobs era.

True, Wikileaks has become politicized recently. I like to check the comment section on NYTimes and other news sites around election times. They always seem to be far more partisan than usual. Almost like people are whipped up into a frenzy supporting their sports franchise to the point it almost seems fake.

Considering there are hundreds of millions of dollars going into either side of the campaign I'd question the source of any online comment taking a highly partisan position that perfectly fits into party lines. Could be either direct 50-cent armies [1] style astroturfing or regular people influenced by other comments fed elsewhere online, or worse, articles fed to reputable news sites.

Even GCHQ docs from the Snowden leaks showed that five eyes have been successfully experimenting with controlling online conversations since at least 2012. So it's definitely doable with a dedicated team.

This is modern PR. Another thing that sites like HN/reddit increasingly have to contend with to keep content authentic and quality...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party?wprov=sfla1

I think this is a very real concern. Considering how stupid the average comment is on a site like that, and considering how most comments simply parrot talking points from other parties, it's likely straightforward to create astroturfing bots.

Have you missed the substantial news about the David Brock led efforts at "CorrectTheRecord?"[0] He was a GOP operative for a long time until he started working for the Clinton candidacy. His organization has even been accused of posting child pornography to Bernie Sanders facebook pages in order to get them disrupted and shut-down.

I don't doubt there are similar efforts on the part of the GOP or Donald Trump supporters.

Bernie Sanders was subject to vicious propaganda and a generally adversarial mass-media, then when the Democratic nomination was "clinched" by Hillary a sudden swelling of negative media stories on the Green Party's Jill Stein and Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson filled the media channels.

Up until that point, they received almost no media coverage.

This has been the nastiest and most manipulative Presidential election I can remember, though I am only 37 so take that as you will. One thing is certain, hard-core progressives and leftists now know for certain what the DNC and Democrats are really about, and how low they will go to accomplish that.

[0]http://correctrecord.org/about/

Wikileaks politicized themselves, look at their Twitter. They clearly made a conscious decision to take a side in a partisan election, rather than just releasing documents and letting them speak for themselves. You can agree or disagree with that decision, but I don't think there needs to be an astroturf conspiracy driving this narrative.

If they only commented on their leaks, that would be one thing, you can't really blame them for not having any Trump documents. But they've given extensive commentary on the email scandal and the FBI investigation, which frankly have nothing to do with their leaks.

> Wikileaks has become politicized recently

Recently!!!?

It's mad that people aren't aware enough to realize what's going on with them. WikiLeaks must be good at putting out noise.

>Combine that with the fact that most people don't want Trump to win

Just to bring you back to planet Earth, all the latest polls show the two major candidates in dead heat.

It's not even planet Earth, it's just basic logic. It most voters don't want Trump to win, Trump will not win a survey of voters.

There's never been any doubt that most white Americans will vote for Trump. The Democrats haven't won whites since 1964. The Civil Rights Act ended that possibility. The big question is whether Trump will overwhelmingly win whites, or just comfortably win whites.

Well no, most of them have Clinton up by a few, and adjusting for their historical bias, by a little more than that. See

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/n...

> I so wish the U.S. moved to a proportional representation/multi-party system sooner rather than later. I'm so sick and tired of their extremely partisan crap. It seems to make everything worse off. The partisan reality-distortion fields are getting bigger and more powerful than Apple's in the Steve Jobs era.

True. I don't advertise this, but I really have a difficult time respecting anyone who would vote for a major party presidential candidate (unless they live in a swing state). It's either a misunderstanding of the longer-term game theory involved or a lack of willingness to risk being on the losing side.

Because at this point, large chunks the press are more interested in smear campaigns against Wikileaks than accurate reporting. For example, remember all those breathless headlines about how Wikileaks recklessly leaked the personal information of every woman in Turkey, and how they were putting domestic violence victims in danger through their arrogance? They didn't, a security researcher called Michael Best did; they just took him at his word and tweeted a link to his blog post. The press went on to exonerate the actual reckless leaker of all responsibility whilst continuing to attack Wikileaks for it because no-one really cared about those domestic violence victims except as a way of attacking Wikileaks.

Many nations has policies that require government employees to save and store any corresponding they make, and to offer the public the ability to get copies. I wonder how much malware exist in those archives.

If a member of the public requested a copy and had their computer infected by a virus, is that the governments fault?

Thousands of instances of malware.

https://github.com/bontchev/wlscrape/blob/master/malware.md

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