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This project began as a conversation between members of the Peoples Liberation Front during Operation Orlando in June of 2011. On June 25, 2011 the PLF launched the HackerLeaks web site to try and bring this important project online. hackerleaks
In both security as well as overall strategy, HackerLeaks is closely modeled on WikiLeaks. Our first priority is to provide a safe, secure - and anonymous way for hackers to disclose sensitive information. Our team of analysts first carefully screens each submission for any possible trace of the senders identity. Our second commitment is to ensure that each and every leak receives the maximum exposure possible in order to achieve the most profound political impact for the risks taken by those submitting material. To that end, we work with media outlets all over the world.For technical assistance or media inquiries, write to HackerLeaks@cyber-rights.net
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and this is the reveiw : Despite countless WikiLeaks copycats popping up since the secret-spilling site first dumped its cache of State Department cables last year, the new generation of leaking sites has produced few WikiLeaks-sized scoops. So instead of waiting for insider whistleblowers, the hacker movement Anonymous hopes that a few outside intruders might start the leaks flowing.
Earlier this week members of the hacker collective, and specifically a sub-group known as the People’s Liberation Front, (PLF) launched two new leaking sites, LocalLeaks.tk (not to be confused with the similarly named Localeaks.com) and HackerLeaks.tk. Both hope to receive documents through an anonymous submissions channel, analyze them, and then distribute them to the press to get “maximum exposure and political impact.”
But while LocalLeaks aims to use WikiLeaks’ model of insider sources to expose corruption on the local scale, HackerLeaks openly invites data thieves to upload documents through its submission system, so that they can be analyzed and publicized. “You download it, we’ll disclose it for you,” the site’s homepage reads, listing potential booty such as “databases, exploits, security flaws, documents, and email spools.”
On Tuesday, according to one of the hackers involved who goes by the name Commander X, the leaking site got its first submission: a list of the personal details of Orlando officials including addresses, home values, incomes and other data. That “leak,” which Commander X says was submitted anonymously to HackerLeaks but was posted, confusingly, on LocalLeaks, comes as Anonymous has been engaged in what it calls “Operation Orlando.” Since early Tuesday hackers have been launching attacks on Orlando-based targets including OrlandoFloridaGuide.com and the websites of the Orlando Chamber of Commerce and Universal Studios in retaliation for arrests of Orlando workers for the non-profit Food Not Bombs who lacked permits.
“These are the folks that wrote and are enforcing a very brutal law against very poor people,” Commander X, who says he is serving as the current “editor in chief” of the two sites, wrote to me over instant message. ”They themselves appear to be very very rich, so we thought we would point that out.”
And why is a leaking site necessary for hackers, who have lately used sites like Pastebin to publish information on their own? Commander X argues that Anonymous and the PLF have already established connections to the media outlets that can help better expose important data, and that they hope to also provide “unique and enlightening analysis.”
“We just wanted to make our own offering, compete in the disclosure marketplace and maybe fill a unique role if we can,” writes Commander X. He argues that part of that unique role is that HackerLeaks will be legal, despite publishing hacked materials. “We don’t obtain this material. We merely publish it. This violates no sane law anywhere.”
That’s an argument that sounds much like the one used by WikiLeaks, which has also published hacked data including Sarah Palin’s stolen emails and East Anglia University’s hacked emails related to climate change.
But that legal stance may be a tough sell for Commander X. Although he refused to comment on whether he had engaged directly in illegal hacking, he describes himself as “field commander of a global cyber militia” and says that he has had some part in Anonymous operations that have involved attacks on Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal in retaliation for their severing ties with WikiLeaks, as well as attacks on the governments of Tunisia, Iran, and Egypt.
Commander X was also named by HBGary Federal chief executive Aaron Barr in a planned presentation that aimed to out Anonymous’ leaders. But Barr misidentified the Anonymous hacker, who tells me he is a “50ish” American, as Ben De Vries, the founder of a Facebook group called Global Strike 2011. Barr’s digging incited Anonymous to attack HBGary Federal, dumping thousands of its emails in February on a site called AnonLeaks, Anonymous’ first experimentation with a WikiLeaks-like interface. Barr resigned later that month. Commander X says he wasn’t involved in the HBGary hack.
Commander X’s subgroup of Anonymous isn’t the only one that’s getting into the leaking game. The last release from the hacker group LulzSec included half a gigabyte of data from AT&T that has been reported to have come from an insider source at the company.
As part of its ongoing campaign known as AntiSec, aimed at exposing corporate and government data and humiliating security firms, one Anonymous twitter feed suggested earlier this week that leakers contact the group over IRC to spill insider secrets: “If you are working for a corrupt government/company,” wrote one Anonymous twitterer, “Leak the data.”
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A series of messages on Twitter Sunday evening promised the release of emails supposedly documenting "fraud and corruption" at Bank of America (BAC). The post, from the anonymous @OperationLeakS handle, said "leaked emails" from the bank would be posted at 5 a.m. London time, which is 1 a.m. in New York.
The release will come three and a half months after Wikileaks founder Julian Assange breezily promised to "take down a bank or two" by releasing "either tens or hundreds of thousands of documents." Assange likened the documents to the ones that prosecutors used in bringing top executives of failed energy trader Enron to justice.
The bank didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The document dump, billed in the Twitter posts as "Black Monday," may well lead to a brief media frenzy -- though that is seeming less and less likely with each depressing development in Japan.
In any case, Assange himself said he didn't think the leaked documents rose to the level of criminal behavior, and the banks have more or less shown that they don't really mind anything short of that. So whatever gets leaked seems distinctly unlikely to make BofA chief Brian Moynihan blush -- let alone bring down a $145 billion bank whose survival became an explicit goal of government policy during the financial meltdown.
The documents apparently center on the bank's mortgage practices, which have come under fire because of BofA's spotty record on wrongful foreclosures and its high level of delinquencies. A 29-minute video that links to one of Sunday evening's Twitter posts accuses the banks of ruining the American dream by wrongfully foreclosing on homeowners.
One recent tweet reads, "Balboa Insurance/Countrywide knowingly hiding foreclosure info from federal auditors during the federal takeovers of IndyMac Federal." Another reads, "Ex-Bank of America Employee Can Prove Mortgage Fraud Part 1."
BofA bought giant subprime lender Countrywide in 2008. It has since spent hundreds of millions defending itself from predatory lending and other lawsuits, and tens of millions more picking up the growing legal tab of ex-Countrywide chief Angelo Mozilo. The swamp is so deep that BofA recently brought in a new executive to try to drain it.
BofA and the other big banks have recently been pushing back against a settlement being pushed by the state attorneys general that would have the top U.S. lenders and mortgage servicers pay $20 billion or so to fix their faulty practices.
The banks' posturing over the mortgage settlement makes it not all that hard to understand why some people would like to bring them down. In typically tone-deaf fashion, BofA – which got the second-biggest bank bailout after Citigroup (C) in the 2008-2009 financial meltdown – says its reason for opposing a big mortgage settlement tab is, get this, fairness.
"There's a core problem that if you start to help certain people and don't help other people, it's going to be very hard to explain the difference," CEO Moynihan, BofA's $10 million man, said last week in a meeting with investors and analysts. "Our duty is to have a fair modification process."
Time will tell what Assange & Co. have on BofA, but clearly it is going to take quite a bombshell to get the bank's attention, let alone bring it down. hackerleaks operationleaks
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