Attack of the Wikileaks clones

This is an interesting story I thought I would share with people. You often hear Julian Assange carry on about how he is the victim of a smear campaign and how unnamed institutions are using dirty tricks tactics against him. Well from where I am sitting, those who live in glass houses, should not thrown stones.

Back in January when I did my short stint as the Wikileaks-Forum owner, there was a misleading attack by one of Julian Assange supporters on the Wikileaks-Forum. Which Julian himself retweeted (so it had his support) . For those of you that dont remember the incident here is the link to the original story:  http://www.karmicsangoma.co.za/2013/01/does-wikileaks-forumcom-spam-spyware.html

In a nutshell, a user by the name of "Stjärna Frånfälle" accused the Wikileaks-forum of having malware. This was then retreated by Julian Assange. Since I am a skilled InfoSec specialist I investigated this claim right away. We could empirically prove that Stjärna Frånfälle was intentionally misleading people. I even remember when I asked "her" to back up the story, we got sent a dodgy fake screenshot.

I think that was one of those moments in my life when I realized I was dealing with some really disturbed human beings. Anyways, water under the bridge and all that, and I moved on with my life. 10 months later I decided to search, "wikileaks-forum" on Twitter and low and behold who do I find?

A Twitter user account by the name of @marthagroup slandering the Wikileaks-Forum. Now this by itself would not be interesting to me. I know there are several factions that are jealous of the accomplishments of the forum that are trying to do their best to attack the forum, however, what interested me was the user, "@marthagroup" was using the exact same profile picture as the fraudulent "Stjärna Frånfälle" account.

I went back to check the "@StjarnaFranfall" account to see what that clone was doing these days only to find out the user behind the clone account had decided to shut it down. Probably because of my last post on that user which outed them for being a fraud. 

Well it seems that user is back again. Once again slandering the Wikileaks-forum, this time under a completely different name. Also from what I have seen, there is a focus group of clones attacking the forum. Though theyre not alone. There is a small group of disturbed people (Im pretty sure theyre either bipolar or paranoid schizophrenics) who are constantly attacking the forum and stalking its members. 

All of this has kinda left a bad taste in my mouth. Gone are the days when I was an idealist, thinking that Wikileaks was run by noble people for a noble cause with noble intentions. This has been replaced by the cold dark reality of subterfuge, back stabbing, dishonesty and deception.

So next time you see Julian and Wikileaks claim they are the victims of a dirty tricks campaign. Just remember, that its pretty unlikely that that is a one way street. Be careful whom you trust. 

PS. I am not the owner or involved directly in running Wikileaks-forum any more. I do however speak to members on both side of the divide and am friendly with people from the forum and some who ardently support Wikileaks. PPS. I am also not the least bit unsure that writing this article is going to light up my twitter feed like a Christmas tree with personal attacks.