Dutch Queen's phone number exposed on net via WikiLeaks

The release of WikiLeaks' unredacted haul of 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables has thrown up an unusual victim: Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

Although unlikely to be the most harmful, the personal phone number of the 73-year-old Dutch monarch is just one of many pieces of information which probably would have been better not published on the internet.
(Note: I've blurred out the phone numbers in the image below)



Queen Beatrix, we are told, speaks good English. Well, that's true for just about everybody I've ever encountered from The Netherlands.

Amongst those to have had their contact details exposed alongside the Dutch Queen include former Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, foreign minister Ben Bot and Defense minister Henk Kamp.

Hopefully prank calls are the the worst scenario which might emerge from from these phone numbers reaching the public domain - but it's an important reminder that it's not just whistleblowers and secret informants who might find themselves affected by the WikiLeaks leak.

I suspect Julian Assange won't be getting an invitation for afternoon tea at the Dutch Royal Family's official residence any time soon. Read More...

WikiLeaks suffers its own data loss incident

Der Spiegel is reporting that WikiLeaks has had... wait for it... a data leakage accident. You might think, "So what? The data has already been leaked!"


Unfortunately, that isn't quite as clear as it seems. WikiLeaks goes to great lengths to protect both their sources and potential informants by redacting their details from the data before publication.

Last summer Daniel Domscheit-Berg had a dispute with Julian Assange and departed with a chunk of the WikiLeaks staff to form OpenLeaks.

In the process Domscheit-Berg was reported to have taken data from a server containing the 250,000+ leaked diplomatic cables in encrypted form and left Assange without access to the contents.
Assange had shared the passphrase to decrypt the cables with an external source as a protective measure and expected the source to keep the key secret.

In November of 2010 Domscheit-Berg returned the files to WikiLeaks. This prompted WikiLeaks supporters to make the contents available in a public archive.

Apparently they didn't notice that the archive included a hidden directory that contained the encrypted file with the cables, and accidentally made the file public.

Assange's external source, not knowing the file was accessible to the public, for some reason publicly disclosed the key this spring.

The result? The uncensored cables are now publicly downloadable and could blow the cover of American informants around the world.

The lesson? Well, even if you are in the business of leaking secrets, you need to keep secrets. I wonder if Julian sees the irony in this incident.

WikiLeaks Twitter feed has posted a message stating "There has been no 'leak at WikiLeaks'. The issue relates to a mainstream media partner and a malicious individual."

If, like WikiLeaks, you need to keep secrets, consider downloading our free e-book, Data Leakage for Dummies.
Read More...