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The Wikileaks "insurance.aes256" File

Oliver

Penultimate Amazing
Oliver
Joined
Aug 12, 2006
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A view months ago Wikileaks published a file called "insurance.aes256" which is about 1.4 Gigs in size. Did anyone in here learned more about the content of that file - or did someone find out what kind of encrypted file it is since we don't know if they used aes at all.

According to Mr. Assange the intention for the publication is to protect the Wikileaks people and the project itself:


Also, if you get "taken out" - and that could be technical, not necessarily physical - what are the alternatives for your cache of material?
Is there a 'second line' of activists in place that would continue the campaign?
Is your material 'dispersed' so that taking out one cache would not necessarily mean the end of the game?

Julian Assange:
The Cable Gate archive has been spread, along with significant material from the US and other countries to over 100,000 people in encrypted form. If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically. Further, the Cable Gate archives is in the hands of multiple news organisations. History will win. The world will be elevated to a better place. Will we survive? That depends on you.


Source: Todays Guardian Interview
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Oliver said:
None of the computer geeks in here heard about that story?
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Yes, I think most of us now heard of it. However, no-one knows what is in it. We could speculate of course: more material? or (part of) the same material but then unedited, with all names still in it?

The best you can do at the moment is to just download it in case indeed something happens that triggers the release of the key.
 
ddt said:
Yes, I think most of us now heard of it. However, no-one knows what is in it. We could speculate of course: more material? or (part of) the same material but then unedited, with all names still in it?

The best you can do at the moment is to just download it in case indeed something happens that triggers the release of the key.
Click to expand...


Well, I don't know if it's legal to download probably top secret documents from non-German countries, or even those that the German Government declares as being confidential given the fact that the file may include some German state secrets Wikileaks didn't publish so far...
 
So they're trying to use it to blackmail people into letting them get away with whatever they want?

I've seen some people refer to it as "Teh real ufos!" information.
 
Wrathernaut said:
So they're trying to use it to blackmail people into letting them get away with whatever they want?

I've seen some people refer to it as "Teh real ufos!" information.
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Who are you talking to?
 
Oliver said:
Well, I don't know if it's legal to download probably top secret documents from non-German countries, or even those that the German Government declares as being confidential given the fact that the file may include some German state secrets Wikileaks didn't publish so far...
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Do you really care? As long as you can't decrypt it, you don't have the information, so I don't see how that would be illegal. And AES is state-of-the-art encryption, you can't even begin to try to decrypt that - with the current technology, the world earlier comes to an end than you have decrypted it (brute force).

While we don't know as yet what will trigger release of the key, if that happens, you always can make the choice then if you think that morally justifies decrypting it. Don't bother with legal justification. The beauty of the information age is that the internet enables to spread data to so many people that the Behörde, eh, the government, are powerless to act against each and any infractor.

Piratebay torrent link
 
Maybe I will download it using TOR and some torrent software, although it will be a pain to grab 1.4 Gigs given the resulting slow connection - if it works at all ...
 
I wouldn't be surprised it the file contains nothing of importance and it is just a bluff. It seems likely to me that if they actually have something they would have just released it.

But really, it is impossible to know what is on the file - if anything - without the passphrase. I don't think it is even possible to tell if it is encrypted with AES. It would seem like the logical choice, since it is approved by the NSA to encrypt top secret data for the very good reason that it cannot be broken even by the NSA itself (unless there is a secret back door or weakness which I find extremely implausible because somebody would have almost certainly found it by now).
 
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Oliver said:
Maybe I will download it using TOR and some torrent software, although it will be a pain to grab 1.4 Gigs given the resulting slow connection - if it works at all ...
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It is bad form to use TOR to download torrents. And why would you bother anyway? Do you think the secret police are going to come bust you for downloading a file that (currently) cannot be opened and which is already in the hands of thousands of people?
 
I don't see why you want to download it. You can't do anything with it, and the file will be indistinguishable from random data. If it turns out to actually be an encrypted file that contains something, you'll find out like everyone else when/if they release the software and keys to decode it.
 
dtugg said:
I wouldn't be surprised it the file contains nothing of importance and it is just a bluff. It seems likely to me that if they actually something they would have just released it.

But really, it is impossible to know what is on the file - if anything - without the passphrase. I don't think it is even possible to tell if it is encrypted with AES. It would seem like the logical choice, since it is approved by the NSA to encrypt top secret data for the very good reason that it cannot be broken even by the NSA itself (unless there is a secret back door or weakness which I find extremely implausible because somebody would have almost certainly found it by now).
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Well, 1.4 Gigabyte of Text is an awful lot of data without considering that the file is compressed. On the other hand Wikileaks may get a lot more data then they are able to review and to publish ... probably including video and sound files - and they didn't release all the data they got about the Iraq Diaries, the Cablegate Data, the BOA data and probably other stuff as well. Didn't the American leak download 500.000 cables? :confused:

Also, I doubt that Wikileaks will vanish any time soon given all the mirrors of the site, so the insurance file may be for harsher cases, or as you implied - nothing but a bluff ...
 
dtugg said:
It is bad form to use TOR to download torrents. And why would you bother anyway? Do you think the secret police are going to come bust you for downloading a file that (currently) cannot be opened and which is already in the hands of thousands of people?
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Nope, I don't trust the Internet in general. :)
 
jsiv said:
I don't see why you want to download it. You can't do anything with it, and the file will be indistinguishable from random data. If it turns out to actually be an encrypted file that contains something, you'll find out like everyone else when/if they release the software and keys to decode it.
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Well, that's true as well - once a key is released, the file will still be there, with quite a lot more seeders ... :"D
 
We don't know that it is text. It could be a pirated copy of Avatar or literally anything.
 
dtugg said:
We don't know that it is text. It could be a pirated copy of Avatar or literally anything.
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Nobody claimed it's text, all I meant was: If it's text, probably compressed, it's an unbelievable big pile of text...
 
This Fox article has Assange suggest it's the unredacted contents:
Assange has warned he can divulge the classified documents in the insurance file and similar backups if he is detained or the WikiLeaks website is permanently removed from the internet. He has suggested the contents are unredacted, posing a possible security risk for coalition partners around the world.
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