Stratfor Calls WikiLeaks E-mail Release 'Deplorable'

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The private security think tank Stratfor has responded to the release of its stolen e-mail today. Not surprising, the company claims that the e-mails could have been forged or altered while in the hands of the thieves that stole them and are refusing to comment on the content of those e-mail.

"In December, thieves compromised Stratfor's data systems and stole a large number of company e-mails, along with other private information of Stratfor readers, subscribers and employees." The Austin, Texas-based firm added, "Some of the e-mails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic. We will not validate either.
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Why oh why did they use words such as "thieves" and "stole"? Does saying "hackers", "leaked" be considered as "weak" words or something?

I mean, if they said "thieves compromised Stratfor's data systems", were their data systems actually stolen from their offices/headquarters, thus depriving them of usage? And e-mail can be stolen now? I guess it "could" happen when the person who gets the e-mail from the server also deletes the e-mail, but that's two separate actions already, unlike actually stealing mail which does both in just one action.
 
A security company which got hacked.

They should call Symantec.
 
entropy13 said:
Why oh why did they use words such as "thieves" and "stole"? Does saying "hackers", "leaked" be considered as "weak" words or something?

I mean, if they said "thieves compromised Stratfor's data systems", were their data systems actually stolen from their offices/headquarters, thus depriving them of usage? And e-mail can be stolen now? I guess it "could" happen when the person who gets the e-mail from the server also deletes the e-mail, but that's two separate actions already, unlike actually stealing mail which does both in just one action.
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You don't have to physically take anything to commit a crime. Even in the non-technical world "Breaking and Entering" and "Tresspassing" are instances of criminal activity where no theft occurred. Just because only "information" was stolen doesn't mean that information isn't valuable. I have no problem with the terms like theft, thieves, or stole in this context.
 
Either way, it proves that Stratfor (like many other "security" companies) is a joke.
 
Once you figure out the layout of the information and how its presented, it makes for very interesting reading. I'm amazed, how many businesses from country's from all around the world used this outfit for information and training. Its a Whose Who of everyone that has some form of influence in the Public and private sector from just about every country on the planet. The tin foil hats can probably be discarded once and for all:eek: when you read the contracts clients sign, the services Stratfor provides etc. Fattypants your going to moisten your drawers when you read this stuff.:D
Stratfor can not go into denial with this information, theirs just to much personal info.
 
NKDietrich said:
To be fair, Stratfor is a private intelligence think-tank, not a computer security firm.
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From what has come out, it would seem they are more than a think-tank. From bribery to insider trading, it would appear they broke quite a few laws.

Considering who they were working with, I expect they will be mostly immune to prosecution.
 
Naieve said:
From what has come out, it would seem they are more than a think-tank. From bribery to insider trading, it would appear they broke quite a few laws.

Considering who they were working with, I expect they will be mostly immune to prosecution.
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Yeah I doubt any consequences will come of any of this.
 
Uncle said:
Once you figure out the layout of the information and how its presented, it makes for very interesting reading. I'm amazed, how many businesses from country's from all around the world used this outfit for information and training. Its a Whose Who of everyone that has some form of influence in the Public and private sector from just about every country on the planet. The tin foil hats can probably be discarded once and for all:eek: when you read the contracts clients sign, the services Stratfor provides etc. Fattypants your going to moisten your drawers when you read this stuff.:D
Stratfor can not go into denial with this information, theirs just to much personal info.
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"e-mails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic. We will not validate either. " Thats putting it mildly, of course they won't openly validate anything, theirs not to much left to hide. You can't make their spreadsheets etc up.
"Describing the e-mails as private property, Stratfor said they were written casually, with no expectation that anyone outside the communication chain would see them." which translate to being open and transparent, the best kind to read.

"They should be read as such," the company said. "Stratfor understands that this hack and the fallout from it, including the disclosures by WikiLeaks, have created serious difficulties for our subscribers, friends and employees." Especially the payoffs, training, and connections. This stuff can really be called what it is 'Influence Peddling" the newer term is "lobbying."
 
entropy13 said:
Why oh why did they use words such as "thieves" and "stole"? Does saying "hackers", "leaked" be considered as "weak" words or something?

I mean, if they said "thieves compromised Stratfor's data systems", were their data systems actually stolen from their offices/headquarters, thus depriving them of usage? And e-mail can be stolen now? I guess it "could" happen when the person who gets the e-mail from the server also deletes the e-mail, but that's two separate actions already, unlike actually stealing mail which does both in just one action.
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I'm not defending Stratfor here, but I think one can accurately call the unauthorized copying of emails as stealing. In my view intellectual property can be stolen (product designs for instance) so I can see how email can be stolen. Same thing goes with the North Face logo; I can use the logo on my clothing, in essence stealing their brand identity, without actually physically taking anything from North Face.

All that said, I'm not an attorney by any stretch.
 
Question : are emails really private, or postcards which can be read by anybody without hacking?


Dum....dum...dum...
 
In the eyes of the world:

A.) If you have to break in, you're a thief.

B.) If you took / copied anything in the process of a break in, it is stolen.

C.) You severely damage your case when you GIVE the company in question a pre-made excuse. Stratfor can easily claim those e-mails are fake / forged / altered by the people that took them.

In Anon's own words, they were looking to "bring them down."

Doing shit this way is stupid all the way around and, in essence, you just gave the company you wanted to "bring down" a free pass (no criminal charges because you stole the evidence) and sympathy for being the "victim" of a hack.

Good job "bringing down the man." Kinda like the LAST bunch of shit Wikileaks released on the U.S. government, we see how that went (not a damn thing done to anyone).
 
Them breaking in would effect the usefulness of this information in a court room but in the eyes of the public its very effective at showing Stratfor to not only being completely full of shit but also corrupt. People in general will have little to no sympathy.

Given the sorts of people Stratfor was dealing with its unlikely, short of a very determined whistle blower or 2 and maybe not even then, that any of this information would have ever come into the public light without this break in.
 
mesyn191 said:
Them breaking in would effect the usefulness of this information in a court room but in the eyes of the public its very effective at showing Stratfor to not only being completely full of shit but also corrupt. People in general will have little to no sympathy.
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If you can show that, you are a better man than the rest of us.

Test your theory about how much people give a shit, walk up to your wife, girlfriend, co-worker, person in the grocery store and tell them what just happened:

Who?

Stratfor

What do they do?

They are a private security think tank

*blank stare* Why were they hacked?

Anonymous wants to bring them down

The 16 year old hacker kids?

Ummm, yeah, those guys

Why did they want to bring them down?

...fuck, I give up.


I personally think that they go about this all wrong and the people they are trying to nail end up walking because these idiots take the evidence (tainting it) before leaking it. Now, the only "investigation" is into who hacked them and the only arrests made will be the hackers.

And, to prove my point, aside from Bradley Manning and dozens of Anon teenagers, how many people have been arrested in connection with Wikileaks and / or Anon document leaks?

Way to go Anon - Wikileaks. :rolleyes:
 
Steve said:
(no criminal charges because you stole the evidence)
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that is assuming there would have been any charges filed in the first place. if the people in charge of policing things like this refuse to, or are otherwise unable to, act, the only other option left is the public release of this information.

also, releasing a COPY of emails that contain criminal evidence does not exclude the FBI raiding their offices, obtaining the origional mail server records (which were definately not tampered with) and using that to prosecute. obviously you cant file charges based on any random piece of information you find on the ineternet.

this release in no way prevents any criminal cases from going forward (though there probably werent any to begin with).
 
Steve said:
I personally think that they go about this all wrong and the people they are trying to nail end up walking because these idiots take the evidence (tainting it) before leaking it. Now, the only "investigation" is into who hacked them and the only arrests made will be the hackers.
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Would it really have mattered if it'd been done differently? I don't think so. Frankly, I would never expect any sort of prosecution or even an investigation to occur when it's something like this. It's ignored until it can't be ignored anymore and then it's swept under the rug. I don't think I'm being cynical either, it's just a dose of reality. They might as well release all of the info and watch it fall like a house of cards, hoping that others in a similar position to the folks and clients of Stratfor take notice.
 
ghost6303 said:
that is assuming there would have been any charges filed in the first place. if the people in charge of policing things like this refuse to, or are otherwise unable to, act, the only other option left is the public release of this information.

also, releasing a COPY of emails that contain criminal evidence does not exclude the FBI raiding their offices, obtaining the origional mail server records (which were definately not tampered with) and using that to prosecute. obviously you cant file charges based on any random piece of information you find on the ineternet.

this release in no way prevents any criminal cases from going forward (though there probably werent any to begin with).
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Actually it could since a release like this could make a search warrent for the companies records even harder to obtain due to the difficulty of seperating the request from this release.
 
Does anyone really read these releases beyond the headline and skimming the first e-mail/text/document and having a good laugh at "oh they pulled that off lol"?
 
Steve said:
Way to go Anon - Wikileaks. :rolleyes:
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Really? What are you suggesting they should have done with the documents instead? They would have simply been ignored if they were handed over to law enforcement instead of the public, because (as the documents themselves show) Stratfor was in bed with the same agencies that would be responsible for prosecuting them. You seem to be implying that throwing shit in their face and besmirching their public image isn't enough, but aside from Batman-style vigilante justice (something most people can agree is a bad thing), I don't understand what they could have done with what they had that would have been any more effective than this.
 
ghost6303 said:
..this release in no way prevents any criminal cases from going forward (though there probably werent any to begin with).
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You might want to brush up on the law there, you can't use stolen evidence to get a warrant. And, the e-mail system WAS compromised by the hackers, how do you think they got the e-mails?

Anyhow, I am not defending anyone...

..I am simply saying that breaking into a rapists' house and stealing evidence / contaminating the crime scene simply gives the rapist an alibi / excuse. Instead of being prosecuted, he can claim to be framed by the hackers that stole the evidence. This point is proven by dozens of Anon arrest...NO arrests at the companies they hack.


CEpeep said:
They would have simply been ignored if they were handed over to law enforcement....
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...stopped reading right about there.
 
CEpeep said:
Really? What are you suggesting they should have done with the documents instead? They would have simply been ignored if they were handed over to law enforcement instead of the public, because (as the documents themselves show) Stratfor was in bed with the same agencies that would be responsible for prosecuting them. You seem to be implying that throwing shit in their face and besmirching their public image isn't enough, but aside from Batman-style vigilante justice (something most people can agree is a bad thing), I don't understand what they could have done with what they had that would have been any more effective than this.
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One of the only things that matters to me is that it is out in the open, outfits like that can only coverup so much, their credibility has been shot down, anonymity is gone. I will take a guess that their is going to be major repercussions for some, lots of these individual and their dealing with friends in other countries. When you have a list of companies,individuals, email addresses business contacts,etc, the door to others is wide open. I don't think this will be the last we will hear of this in some form or another. I believe Pandora's Box has been opened.
 
Uncle said:
One of the only things that matters to me is that it is out in the open, outfits like that can only coverup so much, their credibility has been shot down, anonymity is gone. I will take a guess that their is going to be major repercussions for some, lots of these individual and their dealing with friends in other countries. When you have a list of companies,individuals, email addresses business contacts,etc, the door to others is wide open. I don't think this will be the last we will hear of this in some form or another. I believe Pandora's Box has been opened.
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You mean how Blackwater's Pandora's Box was opened and quickly forgotten when they simply changed their name to Xe Service? And Haliburton and Dyncorp sex slave scandal and blackmailing the military by forcing them to pay millions more than normal for food and logistics which is probably all but forgotten in the public minds while they continue to operate in foreign countries in our country's name?

Security contractors have a shit ton of moxie and they can get away with a lot. In a week or two everyone's going to forget about Stratfor too.

IMO, security contractors of these magnitude should be outlawed in the battlefield. They lack so much oversight that our regular military is forced to observe.
 
ghost6303 said:
that is assuming there would have been any charges filed in the first place. if the people in charge of policing things like this refuse to, or are otherwise unable to, act, the only other option left is the public release of this information.

also, releasing a COPY of emails that contain criminal evidence does not exclude the FBI raiding their offices, obtaining the origional mail server records (which were definately not tampered with) and using that to prosecute. obviously you cant file charges based on any random piece of information you find on the ineternet.

this release in no way prevents any criminal cases from going forward (though there probably werent any to begin with).
Click to expand...

Not only would this free them of any pending charges, it also frees them of any future charges as the chain of custody is broken and all of this data would be by law considered stolen. If anything this stunt by anon only removes any legal burden of guilt that they could of had linking to any information in the emails as none of this is usable in the court of law now.
 
Azhar said:
You mean how Blackwater's Pandora's Box was opened and quickly forgotten when they simply changed their name to Xe Service? And Haliburton and Dyncorp sex slave scandal and blackmailing the military by forcing them to pay millions more than normal for food and logistics which is probably all but forgotten in the public minds while they continue to operate in foreign countries in our country's name?
Security contractors have a shit ton of moxie and they can get away with a lot. In a week or two everyone's going to forget about Stratfor too.
IMO, security contractors of these magnitude should be outlawed in the battlefield. They lack so much oversight that our regular military is forced to observe.
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Azhar, my major point is still, that its out in the open whereby I can scrutinize and at least have a chance to call them on their bullshit. For years outfits like this could hide from the general public and spoon feed us misinformation and what ever else their involved in. On a personal note, I know I can't do much about whats going on but every once in awhile I like to read the truth so I can have a better understanding and also be able to read between the lines so I can make a better informed decisions when the time comes.
 
Steve said:
...stopped reading right about there.
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That's a shame, because all the good stuff is right after that. But it's nothing that's not in the actual source documents, which I assume you read, since you did post this news article, after all.
 
They should have used this massive source of intelligence to flip a contact into admission of knowledge of some wrong doing. That could lead to a proper investigation. They could still investigate into Stratfor to see if anything confidential was lost, but they can not use hacked information to obtain a search warrant. It can however, put private investigor eyes on Stratfor in attempts to find a case of wrong doing in the future for a lawsuit settlement.
 
Steve said:
You might want to brush up on the law there, you can't use stolen evidence to get a warrant.
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Not true. You're thinking of admissibility, and even then evidence obtained illegally is usually exempt from the Exclusionary Rule if it is not obtained by law enforcement or someone working as an agent of law enforcement.

The criteria to get a search warrant is merely probable cause, which is a much lower standard than getting something admitted into evidence. All they have to do is convince a judge that they have good reason to believe a crime is being committed or that evidence of a crime exists. There are no hard and fast rules, and whether you get your warrant is going to depend on how the judge feels about your reasoning. A bunch of leaked emails, IF they clearly demonstrated criminal activity, would be more than enough to get a warrant for the originals, if anyone wanted to actually look into it.

But in all honesty it's doubtful anything will come of this.
 
CEpeep said:
That's a shame, because all the good stuff is right after that. But it's nothing that's not in the actual source documents, which I assume you read, since you did post this news article, after all.
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Okay, I re-read it and I agree with this part:



CEpeep said:
I don't understand...
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:D

The rest was simply you relying on documents that were presented by the people that stole them and quoting opinion as fact. You went on to state that that every law enformcement on the planet would cover up / surpress evidence (how you could know that is impossible). So, as I do every time I find myself reading stuff like that, I stopped.
 
Steve said:
The rest was simply you relying on documents that were presented by the people that stole them and quoting opinion as fact.
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So the only legitimate way to collect incriminating evidence is to ask for it nicely? :rolleyes: Just because the documents weren't willingly released by Stratfor doesn't suddenly mean they were made up and pulled out of someone's ass...
 
NKDietrich said:
Not true. You're thinking of admissibility, and even then evidence obtained illegally is usually exempt from the Exclusionary Rule if it is not obtained by law enforcement or someone working as an agent of law enforcement.
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Slow down there buddy, I've watched enough TV to know that probable cause can't be established using evidence obtained illegally. (Matlock Episode 4 series 29). :D

All kidding aside, had Anon been smart, they would have NOT bragged about the intrusion and defaced the site publicly. They would have got the info into the hands of the authorites anonymously (or via media contact) and law enforcement could have gotten a warrant, subpoenas, etc. etc. and bum rushed the shitbags.

Instead, Stratfor will not be punished, more Anonymous turds will be arrested and the whole thing fades from public view all because Anon wanted to grand stand with Wikileaks. It has happened every...single...time. The only people being arrested are the teenage Anon-tards. :(
 
CEpeep said:
So the only legitimate way to collect incriminating evidence is to ask for it nicely? :rolleyes: Just because the documents weren't willingly released by Stratfor doesn't suddenly mean they were made up and pulled out of someone's ass...
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Please re-read the thread.

The minute the servers were broken into and the data was removed by a group actively trying to "bring them down," everything about those documents was tainted and prevents it from being used as evidence...anywhere.

I might take your word for it if you are saying you stole the documents and can guarantee they have not been altered in any way.

Until then, you can kill all the eyerolling.
 
Steve said:
The minute the servers were broken into and the data was removed by a group actively trying to "bring them down," everything about those documents was tainted and prevents it from being used as evidence...anywhere.
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"Evidence" is only useful in a law enforcement context, something Anonymous is uninterested in. After reading your reply to NKDietrich, I think we have more common ground than I previously thought. I think you are simply being unreasonable in expecting to Anonymous to cooperate with law enforcement when their very existence is counter to traditional notions/methods of legal enforcement. And law enforcement certainly doesn't do much to endear themselves to people who obtain such documents, when their general course of action is to arrest the leakers and then ignore the documents without conducting an investigation of their own. Why would Anonymous be inclined to trust police in this circumstance, when police have repeatedly shat on everything Anonymous seems to stand for? I agree though that if they had somehow brokered a deal with Anonymous and then busted Stratfor TV-cop-drama style, that definitely would have been the best course of action, as well as just some cool shit in general.
 
Well at least we know Steve still has faith in the law and the law enforcement that the tampering of Wikileaks is unacceptable to him.

In my case I'm disillusioned now since even "law enforcement" tampers with evidence so that only the actual shooter is charged, but not the owner of the gun, and neither the one that paid the owner of the gun to find someone to kill the target he has in mind.

And then there would be "drug raids" on someone house where the drugs only appears in the house after the police arrive.
 
Steve said:
If you can show that, you are a better man than the rest of us.

Test your theory about how much people give a shit, walk up to your wife, girlfriend, co-worker, person in the grocery store and tell them what just happened:
Click to expand...
Don't be facetious. The people who don't know about Stratfor or follow its sort of "analysis" probably won't get too worked about this but the people who do will likely shun Stratfor from here on out. Those implicated in the back room insider trading deals will also probably not work with Stratfor again too since they've been shown to be at the very least incapable of holding a secret.
Steve said:
I personally think that they go about this all wrong and the people they are trying to nail end up walking because these idiots take the evidence (tainting it) before leaking it. Now, the only "investigation" is into who hacked them and the only arrests made will be the hackers.
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Considering that Stratfor likely wasn't being investigated for anything prior to this what is your point exactly? What DA or whatever was suspecting of wrong doing and attempting to bring charges?
Steve said:
And, to prove my point, aside from Bradley Manning and dozens of Anon teenagers, how many people have been arrested in connection with Wikileaks and / or Anon document leaks?

Way to go Anon - Wikileaks. :rolleyes:
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That just proves how corrupt our government is right now. If Watergate were to happen today its likely it'd just be swept under the proverbial rug.
 
Steve said:
Slow down there buddy, I've watched enough TV to know that probable cause can't be established using evidence obtained illegally.
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Evidence obtained unlawfully by a non-governmental authority can be admissible. Even a cursory investigation into the law would have shown you this.
 
If they didn't want Wikileaks to have them, they should have had better security.

Pretty sad that an intelligence company can't lock down its information.
 
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