– 1 hr 20 mins agoNEW YORK (Reuters) – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he enjoys making banks squirm thinking they might be the next targets of his website which has published U.S. diplomatic and military secrets.
"I think it's great. We have all these banks squirming, thinking maybe it's them," Assange told the CBS television program "60 Minutes" in an interview.
CBS released a partial transcript on Friday ahead of Sunday's broadcast of the full segment.
Bank of America Corp shares fell more than 3 percent on November 30 on investor fears that the largest U.S. bank by assets would be the subject of a document release.
Interviewer Steve Kroft asked Assange whether he had acquired a five-gigabyte hard drive belonging to one of the bank's executives, as Assange had previously asserted.
"I won't make any comment in relation to that upcoming publication," said Assange, who is under a form of modified house arrest in England, awaiting an extradition hearing to Sweden for questioning over alleged sex offenses that he denies.
Assange had told Forbes magazine that WikiLeaks planned a "megaleak" by releasing tens of thousands of internal documents from a major U.S. bank in early 2011 that he expected would lead to investigations of the bank.
In an October 2009 interview, Assange told Computerworld that WikiLeaks had obtained five gigabytes of data from a Bank of America executive's hard drive.
The Forbes interview came just after WikiLeaks released 250,000 U.S. government diplomatic cables. Previously, WikiLeaks had made public nearly 500,000 classified U.S. files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Major headlines were generated by some of the cables, which revealed that Saudi leaders had urged U.S. military action against Iran and detailed contacts between U.S. diplomats and political dissidents and opposition leaders in some countries.
Assange told "60 Minutes" he fully expected U.S. retaliation but that the American government was incapable of taking his website down.
"The U.S. does not have the technology to take the site down . ... Just the way our technology is constructed, the way the Internet is constructed," Assange said.
"We've had attacks on particular domain names. Little pieces of infrastructure knocked out. But we now have some 2,000 fully independent in every way websites, where we're publishing around the world. It is -- I mean, it's not possible to do."
WikiLeaks says it is a nonprofit organization funded by human rights campaigners, journalists and the general public. Launched in 2006, it promotes the leaking of information to fight government and corporate corruption.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Xavier Briand)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/httptechlandtimecom20110128howegyptcutofftheinternetxidrssfullworldyahoo;_ylt=Ag1N7EXNU8Eblm3BtK0NLv5n.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTRvMWIyNTAzBGFzc2V0Ay9zL3RpbWUvaHR0cHRlY2hsYW5kdGltZWNvbTIwMTEwMTI4aG93ZWd5cHRjdXRvZmZ0aGVpbnRlcm5ldHhpZHJzc2Z1bGx3b3JsZHlhaG9vBGNjb2RlA21wX2VjXzhfMTAEY3BvcwMzBHBvcwMzBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDaG93ZWd5cHRjdXRv
Excerpt:
AFP – Egyptian plain clothes police officers arrest a demonstrator in Cairo during anti-government protests. …
"I think it's great. We have all these banks squirming, thinking maybe it's them," Assange told the CBS television program "60 Minutes" in an interview.
CBS released a partial transcript on Friday ahead of Sunday's broadcast of the full segment.
Bank of America Corp shares fell more than 3 percent on November 30 on investor fears that the largest U.S. bank by assets would be the subject of a document release.
Interviewer Steve Kroft asked Assange whether he had acquired a five-gigabyte hard drive belonging to one of the bank's executives, as Assange had previously asserted.
"I won't make any comment in relation to that upcoming publication," said Assange, who is under a form of modified house arrest in England, awaiting an extradition hearing to Sweden for questioning over alleged sex offenses that he denies.
Assange had told Forbes magazine that WikiLeaks planned a "megaleak" by releasing tens of thousands of internal documents from a major U.S. bank in early 2011 that he expected would lead to investigations of the bank.
In an October 2009 interview, Assange told Computerworld that WikiLeaks had obtained five gigabytes of data from a Bank of America executive's hard drive.
The Forbes interview came just after WikiLeaks released 250,000 U.S. government diplomatic cables. Previously, WikiLeaks had made public nearly 500,000 classified U.S. files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Major headlines were generated by some of the cables, which revealed that Saudi leaders had urged U.S. military action against Iran and detailed contacts between U.S. diplomats and political dissidents and opposition leaders in some countries.
Assange told "60 Minutes" he fully expected U.S. retaliation but that the American government was incapable of taking his website down.
"The U.S. does not have the technology to take the site down . ... Just the way our technology is constructed, the way the Internet is constructed," Assange said.
"We've had attacks on particular domain names. Little pieces of infrastructure knocked out. But we now have some 2,000 fully independent in every way websites, where we're publishing around the world. It is -- I mean, it's not possible to do."
WikiLeaks says it is a nonprofit organization funded by human rights campaigners, journalists and the general public. Launched in 2006, it promotes the leaking of information to fight government and corporate corruption.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Xavier Briand)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/httptechlandtimecom20110128howegyptcutofftheinternetxidrssfullworldyahoo;_ylt=Ag1N7EXNU8Eblm3BtK0NLv5n.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTRvMWIyNTAzBGFzc2V0Ay9zL3RpbWUvaHR0cHRlY2hsYW5kdGltZWNvbTIwMTEwMTI4aG93ZWd5cHRjdXRvZmZ0aGVpbnRlcm5ldHhpZHJzc2Z1bGx3b3JsZHlhaG9vBGNjb2RlA21wX2VjXzhfMTAEY3BvcwMzBHBvcwMzBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDaG93ZWd5cHRjdXRv
Excerpt:
How Egypt Cut Off the Internet
AFP – Egyptian plain clothes police officers arrest a demonstrator in Cairo during anti-government protests. …
Reports have now verified that Eqypt has cut off access to the internet amid political protests. Renesys, an internet monitoring firm based in Manchester, New Hampshire, calls the situation "an action unprecedented in Internet history," according to a company blog post.
The development of an internet "kill switch" that our own government could use in the case of a national emergency has been proposed here in the U.S., and if we take a look at how Egypt has already flipped its own kill switch, it may give us more insight into how such a system would work here. (See photos of the protests paralyzing Egypt.)
The Basics of an Internet Connection
On the simplest of levels, your computer connects to the internet through an internet service provider (ISP) - Comcast, Time Warner, Qwest, Verizon, etc. - and your service provider either connects directly to all the other internet service providers around the world or to a larger internet service provider that then connects to all the others.
When you open up your web browser and type a domain name into the address bar - say Time.com, for instance - your service provider sends a lightning-quick request to whichever service provider Time.com uses to make its web pages publicly available on the internet.
The computer that holds all of Time.com's web pages sends a response back through its internet service provider basically saying, "Yes, we're online. Here's the web page you requested." (See TIME's video about the ideology behind the protests.)
The Domain Name System
That handshake-type scenario is routed through a domain name system (DNS) server. Your computer is identified with a unique numeric code called an internet protocol (IP) address. Time.com's computers also have their own IP addresses. The DNS server converts the plain-English web address that you typed into your browser from www.time.com to the appropriate numeric IP address so it can be routed through the internet between your computer and whichever computer at Time.com holds the web page you've requested.
In most cases, your internet service provider automatically designates a DNS server for your connection to use. But if that particular DNS server gets knocked offline somehow, you won't be able to negotiate any sort of internet requests. Your computer will send a request for a web page through your ISP, which will try to route it through the assigned DNS server and, if that server's not available, you won't get an answer back. (See how fear of Islamists is plaguing the U.S.)
The beauty of how the internet is structured, though, is that you can use any of a number of publicly-available DNS servers if the one your ISP assigned you has been knocked offline. For instance, the DNS server that my Comcast connection uses got knocked offline for an entire day a couple months ago and I was able to manually configure my wireless router to connect through Google's free DNS server instead. It's tricky, but it works.
Egypt's DNS Servers
The Egyptian government has been able to cut off most of the country's internet access simply by shutting down the various DNS servers used by Egyptian internet service providers. As such, any requests for web pages initiated from inside Egypt have been unsuccessful since there aren't any available DNS servers to facilitate the hand-offs, and any requests for websites located inside Egypt coming from computers anywhere else in the world haven't worked either.
While this has affected most of Egypt's internet traffic, some people are able to work around the issue by manually using DNS servers that haven't been taken offline - similar to the method I used when Comcast's DNS server went down. BGPmon.com is reporting that 88% of Egypt's internet traffic has been knocked offline, which seems to indicate that 12% of those who are still able to access the internet there are either using alternative DNS servers or haven't had their DNS servers taken offline yet (apparently some dial-up internet connections are still able to get through, for instance). (See TIME's latest updates on the crisis in Cairo.)
The Kill Switch
While images of a big red button housed inside a Plexiglass case that can only be unlocked by two simultaneous key twists of top government officials seem to fit the idea of how such an internet kill switch would work, the reality is far more mundane. In Egypt's case, the internet service providers that operate within the country agree to let the government shut down the commonly-used DNS servers if they see fit to do so.
The BBC reports that one of Egypt's big internet service providers, Vodafone, issued an e-mail statement simply stating that the company was instructed to shut down its DNS servers. "Under Egyptian legislation the authorities have the right to issue such and order and we are obliged to comply with it," said the statement.
The same order was almost certainly issued to all the other internet service providers operating inside Egypt and, just like that, the internet went down.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110128/bs_nm/us_markets_stocks;_ylt=Atb4rqvC6UG0AkVvsFUVBwi9F4l4;_ylu=X3oDMTNlbmVucXA0BGFzc2V0Ay9zL25tLzIwMTEwMTI4L2JzX25tL3VzX21hcmtldHNfc3RvY2tzBGNjb2RlA21wX2VjXzhfMTAEY3BvcwM5BHBvcwM5BHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDZWd5cHRyaW90c2tu
Excerpt:
The development of an internet "kill switch" that our own government could use in the case of a national emergency has been proposed here in the U.S., and if we take a look at how Egypt has already flipped its own kill switch, it may give us more insight into how such a system would work here. (See photos of the protests paralyzing Egypt.)
The Basics of an Internet Connection
On the simplest of levels, your computer connects to the internet through an internet service provider (ISP) - Comcast, Time Warner, Qwest, Verizon, etc. - and your service provider either connects directly to all the other internet service providers around the world or to a larger internet service provider that then connects to all the others.
When you open up your web browser and type a domain name into the address bar - say Time.com, for instance - your service provider sends a lightning-quick request to whichever service provider Time.com uses to make its web pages publicly available on the internet.
The computer that holds all of Time.com's web pages sends a response back through its internet service provider basically saying, "Yes, we're online. Here's the web page you requested." (See TIME's video about the ideology behind the protests.)
The Domain Name System
That handshake-type scenario is routed through a domain name system (DNS) server. Your computer is identified with a unique numeric code called an internet protocol (IP) address. Time.com's computers also have their own IP addresses. The DNS server converts the plain-English web address that you typed into your browser from www.time.com to the appropriate numeric IP address so it can be routed through the internet between your computer and whichever computer at Time.com holds the web page you've requested.
In most cases, your internet service provider automatically designates a DNS server for your connection to use. But if that particular DNS server gets knocked offline somehow, you won't be able to negotiate any sort of internet requests. Your computer will send a request for a web page through your ISP, which will try to route it through the assigned DNS server and, if that server's not available, you won't get an answer back. (See how fear of Islamists is plaguing the U.S.)
The beauty of how the internet is structured, though, is that you can use any of a number of publicly-available DNS servers if the one your ISP assigned you has been knocked offline. For instance, the DNS server that my Comcast connection uses got knocked offline for an entire day a couple months ago and I was able to manually configure my wireless router to connect through Google's free DNS server instead. It's tricky, but it works.
Egypt's DNS Servers
The Egyptian government has been able to cut off most of the country's internet access simply by shutting down the various DNS servers used by Egyptian internet service providers. As such, any requests for web pages initiated from inside Egypt have been unsuccessful since there aren't any available DNS servers to facilitate the hand-offs, and any requests for websites located inside Egypt coming from computers anywhere else in the world haven't worked either.
While this has affected most of Egypt's internet traffic, some people are able to work around the issue by manually using DNS servers that haven't been taken offline - similar to the method I used when Comcast's DNS server went down. BGPmon.com is reporting that 88% of Egypt's internet traffic has been knocked offline, which seems to indicate that 12% of those who are still able to access the internet there are either using alternative DNS servers or haven't had their DNS servers taken offline yet (apparently some dial-up internet connections are still able to get through, for instance). (See TIME's latest updates on the crisis in Cairo.)
The Kill Switch
While images of a big red button housed inside a Plexiglass case that can only be unlocked by two simultaneous key twists of top government officials seem to fit the idea of how such an internet kill switch would work, the reality is far more mundane. In Egypt's case, the internet service providers that operate within the country agree to let the government shut down the commonly-used DNS servers if they see fit to do so.
The BBC reports that one of Egypt's big internet service providers, Vodafone, issued an e-mail statement simply stating that the company was instructed to shut down its DNS servers. "Under Egyptian legislation the authorities have the right to issue such and order and we are obliged to comply with it," said the statement.
The same order was almost certainly issued to all the other internet service providers operating inside Egypt and, just like that, the internet went down.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110128/bs_nm/us_markets_stocks;_ylt=Atb4rqvC6UG0AkVvsFUVBwi9F4l4;_ylu=X3oDMTNlbmVucXA0BGFzc2V0Ay9zL25tLzIwMTEwMTI4L2JzX25tL3VzX21hcmtldHNfc3RvY2tzBGNjb2RlA21wX2VjXzhfMTAEY3BvcwM5BHBvcwM5BHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDZWd5cHRyaW90c2tu
Excerpt:
Egypt riots knock Wall St to biggest drop in 6 months
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks suffered their biggest one-day loss in nearly six months on Friday as anti-government rioting in Egypt prompted investors to flee to less risky assets to ride out the turmoil.
Increased instability in the Middle East drove up the CBOE Volatility Index (.VIX), the stock market's fear gauge, as investors scrambled for protective positions.
"The market hates uncertainties, especially geopolitical ones, and based on how that shapes up throughout the weekend (in Egypt), next week's trading will be impacted," said Thomas Nyheim, portfolio manager for Christiana Bank & Trust Co in Greenville, Delaware.
Trading volume was the highest of the year at 9.97 billion shares on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, compared to last year's estimated daily average of 8.47 billion shares.
The market drop ended the Dow's eight-week winning streak and pushed the S&P 500 below its 14-day moving average for the first time in two months. Disappointing results from Amazon.com
(AMZN.O) and Ford (F.N) further added to the gloom.
Developments in the Middle East could be a trigger for investors to sell at a time when many expected a correction after a market rally of about 18 percent since September.
"I think the next two to three weeks, the crisis in Egypt and potentially across the Middle East, might be an excuse for a big selloff of 5 to 10 percent," said Keith Wirtz, president and chief investment officer at Fifth Third Asset Management in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Nasdaq quotations for its main stock indexes suffered an outage of nearly one hour at the open, causing confusion among traders. Nasdaq OMX Group (NDAQ.O) blamed a glitch with its global index data service.
The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) ended down 166.13 points, or 1.39 percent, at 11,823.70. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) was down 23.20 points, or 1.79 percent, at 1,276.34. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) fell 68.39 points, or 2.48 percent, at 2,686.89.
For the week, the Dow fell 0.4 percent, the S&P lost 0.5 percent and the Nasdaq dipped 0.1 percent.
Amazon.com (AMZN.O) shares slipped 7.2 percent to $171.14, a day after the online retailer recorded revenue below the consensus view.
Ford Motor Co (F.N) slumped 13.4 percent to $16.27 after a steep drop in quarterly profit. Rival automaker General Motors Co (GM.N) also lost 5.4 percent to $36.60.
Dow component Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) also fell 3.9 percent to $27.75 a day after its profit dipped.
In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak sent troops and armored
cars into cities in an attempt to quell street fighting and mass protests, and medical sources said at least five protesters had been killed and 870 wounded.
The VIX settled up 24.1 percent at 20.04. The percentage gain was the largest since May 20. U.S. Treasuries prices and the dollar -- assets considered safe compared to stocks -- rallied.
U.S. crude futures rose 4.4 percent to $89.43 a barrel as the protests in Egypt threatened Middle East stability. Oil companies with operations in the region were hit, including Apache Corp (APA.N) and Occidental Petroleum Corp (OXY.N).
Apache shares were down 1.3 percent at $144.84 and Occidental Petroleum fell 3.3 percent to $93.81.
Equities garnered support from data showing the U.S. economy grew at a 3.2 percent rate in the fourth quarter as consumer spending accelerated.
Declining stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 2,533 to 484. On the Nasdaq, decliners beat advancers by 2,221 to 413.
Increased instability in the Middle East drove up the CBOE Volatility Index (.VIX), the stock market's fear gauge, as investors scrambled for protective positions.
"The market hates uncertainties, especially geopolitical ones, and based on how that shapes up throughout the weekend (in Egypt), next week's trading will be impacted," said Thomas Nyheim, portfolio manager for Christiana Bank & Trust Co in Greenville, Delaware.
Trading volume was the highest of the year at 9.97 billion shares on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, compared to last year's estimated daily average of 8.47 billion shares.
The market drop ended the Dow's eight-week winning streak and pushed the S&P 500 below its 14-day moving average for the first time in two months. Disappointing results from Amazon.com
(AMZN.O) and Ford (F.N) further added to the gloom.
Developments in the Middle East could be a trigger for investors to sell at a time when many expected a correction after a market rally of about 18 percent since September.
"I think the next two to three weeks, the crisis in Egypt and potentially across the Middle East, might be an excuse for a big selloff of 5 to 10 percent," said Keith Wirtz, president and chief investment officer at Fifth Third Asset Management in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Nasdaq quotations for its main stock indexes suffered an outage of nearly one hour at the open, causing confusion among traders. Nasdaq OMX Group (NDAQ.O) blamed a glitch with its global index data service.
The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) ended down 166.13 points, or 1.39 percent, at 11,823.70. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) was down 23.20 points, or 1.79 percent, at 1,276.34. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) fell 68.39 points, or 2.48 percent, at 2,686.89.
For the week, the Dow fell 0.4 percent, the S&P lost 0.5 percent and the Nasdaq dipped 0.1 percent.
Amazon.com (AMZN.O) shares slipped 7.2 percent to $171.14, a day after the online retailer recorded revenue below the consensus view.
Ford Motor Co (F.N) slumped 13.4 percent to $16.27 after a steep drop in quarterly profit. Rival automaker General Motors Co (GM.N) also lost 5.4 percent to $36.60.
Dow component Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) also fell 3.9 percent to $27.75 a day after its profit dipped.
In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak sent troops and armored
cars into cities in an attempt to quell street fighting and mass protests, and medical sources said at least five protesters had been killed and 870 wounded.
The VIX settled up 24.1 percent at 20.04. The percentage gain was the largest since May 20. U.S. Treasuries prices and the dollar -- assets considered safe compared to stocks -- rallied.
U.S. crude futures rose 4.4 percent to $89.43 a barrel as the protests in Egypt threatened Middle East stability. Oil companies with operations in the region were hit, including Apache Corp (APA.N) and Occidental Petroleum Corp (OXY.N).
Apache shares were down 1.3 percent at $144.84 and Occidental Petroleum fell 3.3 percent to $93.81.
Equities garnered support from data showing the U.S. economy grew at a 3.2 percent rate in the fourth quarter as consumer spending accelerated.
Declining stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 2,533 to 484. On the Nasdaq, decliners beat advancers by 2,221 to 413.
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