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Internet security company Tiversa says WikiLeaks may be exploiting a feature in peer-to-peer file-sharing applications to search for classified data
By Michael Riley
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In April 2009 the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks published a secret U.S. military document detailing technological capabilities of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. In an online post explaining how it obtained the information, WikiLeaks indicated only that it came from "a source." It was another coup for WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, who describes the far-flung organization—it has no fixed domicile—as a secure digital drop box for disaffected insiders. He has repeatedly said WikiLeaks doesn't actively obtain classified documents but rather provides a platform for others who have confidential information to reveal for the public good.
Except that WikiLeaks, according to Internet security company Tiversa, appears to have hunted down that military document itself. Tiversa says the group may have exploited a feature of file-sharing applications such as LimeWire and Kazaa that are often used to swap pirated copies of movies and music for free. If, for example, a Pentagon employee were to log on to such a peer-to-peer network (an array of disparate computers with no central hub) to download a movie, he could possibly expose every last e-mail and spreadsheet on his PC to prying eyes. That's because some peer-to-peer, or P2P, applications may scan users' hard drives for shareable files. Not turning that feature off, or specifying which parts of the hard drive may be searched, leaves the door wide open.
In the missile-range case, Tiversa's systems noticed unusual activity coming from a cluster of computers in Sweden, where until December WikiLeaks had some of its key servers. The cluster was furiously searching P2P networks around the world. It hit pay dirt in the form of a file blandly labeled BPL_HI.pdf, available for download from a computer in Hawaii. The Swedish computers downloaded the document, and two months later it was posted on WikiLeaks.
Executives at Tiversa, which is hired by governments and corporations to use the same loophole to find exposed documents and figure out who might be accessing them, say the Hawaii incident wasn't an isolated case. Its technology has detected the mysterious Swedish computers downloading gigabytes of data, much of which soon appeared on WikiLeaks. "WikiLeaks is doing searches themselves on file-sharing networks," says Robert Boback, Tiversa's chief executive officer. "It would be highly unlikely that someone else from Sweden is issuing those same types of searches resulting in that same type of information." A spokesman for WikiLeaks declined to discuss the sources of its secrets or its policy for verifying information it receives. Mark Stephens, WikiLeaks's London attorney, called the claim "completely false in every regard."
Dozens of P2P networks sprang up in the wake of Napster a decade ago. Teenagers use them to get Justin Bieber songs; grown-ups download episodes of Mad Men. The networks are especially popular with soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, who use them to swap music and porn. Boback says it's an open secret among researchers, financial fraudsters, and intelligence agencies that many of these networks are rich sources of confidential documents the networks' users accidentally share—pirates can easily be pirated, as it were. According to Tiversa, in 2009 a Maryland defense contractor got on a P2P network and exposed the designs for Marine One, the Presidential helicopter; that data wound up on a computer in Iran. To sift through one network, all an intruder needs is a basic understanding of P2P, says Boback. To conduct a massive search of networks around the world, huge amounts of computing horsepower and bandwidth are required.
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By Michael Riley
Browse Issues
Browse the BusinessWeek Archive
In April 2009 the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks published a secret U.S. military document detailing technological capabilities of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. In an online post explaining how it obtained the information, WikiLeaks indicated only that it came from "a source." It was another coup for WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, who describes the far-flung organization—it has no fixed domicile—as a secure digital drop box for disaffected insiders. He has repeatedly said WikiLeaks doesn't actively obtain classified documents but rather provides a platform for others who have confidential information to reveal for the public good.
Except that WikiLeaks, according to Internet security company Tiversa, appears to have hunted down that military document itself. Tiversa says the group may have exploited a feature of file-sharing applications such as LimeWire and Kazaa that are often used to swap pirated copies of movies and music for free. If, for example, a Pentagon employee were to log on to such a peer-to-peer network (an array of disparate computers with no central hub) to download a movie, he could possibly expose every last e-mail and spreadsheet on his PC to prying eyes. That's because some peer-to-peer, or P2P, applications may scan users' hard drives for shareable files. Not turning that feature off, or specifying which parts of the hard drive may be searched, leaves the door wide open.
In the missile-range case, Tiversa's systems noticed unusual activity coming from a cluster of computers in Sweden, where until December WikiLeaks had some of its key servers. The cluster was furiously searching P2P networks around the world. It hit pay dirt in the form of a file blandly labeled BPL_HI.pdf, available for download from a computer in Hawaii. The Swedish computers downloaded the document, and two months later it was posted on WikiLeaks.
Executives at Tiversa, which is hired by governments and corporations to use the same loophole to find exposed documents and figure out who might be accessing them, say the Hawaii incident wasn't an isolated case. Its technology has detected the mysterious Swedish computers downloading gigabytes of data, much of which soon appeared on WikiLeaks. "WikiLeaks is doing searches themselves on file-sharing networks," says Robert Boback, Tiversa's chief executive officer. "It would be highly unlikely that someone else from Sweden is issuing those same types of searches resulting in that same type of information." A spokesman for WikiLeaks declined to discuss the sources of its secrets or its policy for verifying information it receives. Mark Stephens, WikiLeaks's London attorney, called the claim "completely false in every regard."
Dozens of P2P networks sprang up in the wake of Napster a decade ago. Teenagers use them to get Justin Bieber songs; grown-ups download episodes of Mad Men. The networks are especially popular with soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, who use them to swap music and porn. Boback says it's an open secret among researchers, financial fraudsters, and intelligence agencies that many of these networks are rich sources of confidential documents the networks' users accidentally share—pirates can easily be pirated, as it were. According to Tiversa, in 2009 a Maryland defense contractor got on a P2P network and exposed the designs for Marine One, the Presidential helicopter; that data wound up on a computer in Iran. To sift through one network, all an intruder needs is a basic understanding of P2P, says Boback. To conduct a massive search of networks around the world, huge amounts of computing horsepower and bandwidth are required.
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