Attack on Spy Activist's Site by Declan McCullagh
A website that distributed secret documents from U.S. and Japanese intelligence agencies apparently is under siege in a denial-of-service attack.
The publisher of cryptome.org, which houses a massive archive of files related to spy agencies, recently started publishing a series of classified CIA documents and personnel files related to Japan's Public Security Investigation Agency.
That resulted in a deluge of traffic to the site, which slowed the Web server, housed on a Verio network.
But what brought the struggling machine to its knees was what cryptome.org publisher John Young says is a denial-of-service attack.
"News reports on the CIA docs at first seemed to be the cause, but right now a couple of comp wizards are hot on the trail of a possible culprit which appears to have set in motion a DoS attack," Young said in an email message.
The FBI contacted Young last Thursday and asked him to remove some of the documents. He refused.
Wired News reported Young's efforts on Friday. The Associated Press and the Washington Post ran articles over the weekend, as did Matt Drudge's drudgereport.com.
Also over the weekend, the apparent source of the documents -- who used an alias when sending them to Young and posting them to a Usenet newsgroup -- told Wired News he wanted his name to be made public.
"Please reveal my name. My name is, as you presume, Hironari Noda. I was arrested last year and now I have nothing to lose," Noda wrote in an email message.
Noda is a former employee of the PSIA who was prosecuted and released on probation. He has published a book titled CIA Spy Training: An Experience of One Agent of the PSIA.
The document Noda distributed appears to be a PSIA personnel file with over 400 names, birthdates, and titles, starting with Director General Hidenao Toyoshima. The document's title: "The Most Incompetent Intelligence Agency in the World."
"There's nothing wrong with me putting this stuff up in the U.S.," says Young, who recently rankled editors at The New York Times when he posted a classified CIA document about the 1953 Iranian coup that the paper pulled from its own site. "It's not wrong or illegal."
Young, a 64-year-old New York architect, has spent years amassing a vast collection of reports. The collection, over 4,000 files about privacy, technology, and intelligence agencies, is probably the world's most comprehensive public collection of its kind.
A week ago, Young added a document apparently classified as "secret" by the CIA -- and also prepared for Japanese officials -- that includes a fairly detailed overview of the U.S. intelligence community, including its budgets and personnel trends. Its author is listed as Assistant CIA Director Charles Allen, who referred calls to a spokeswoman.
"We're always concerned if classified information is made public," a CIA spokeswoman told Wired News on Friday. "That's a serious matter.... Leaks of classified information are certainly of concern to this agency."