(Newser)
–
A lesson in the importance of changing your passwords, courtesy of WikiLeaks and the Guardian: An unredacted version of WikiLeaks' entire trove of US diplomatic cables has been leaked online and WikiLeaks says it's all the newspaper's fault, the BBC reports. A message from the site posted on Twitter accuses Guardian journalists of committing a "previously undetected act of gross negligence or malice" by leaking top-secret decryption passwords. WikiLeaks warns that it has commenced legal action.
The Guardian counters that while a password was mentioned in its book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, the paper had been told it was a temporary password that would be deleted within hours after the cables had been accessed. The same file with the same password, however, later appeared on file-sharing site BitTorrent. "It's nonsense to suggest the Guardian's WikiLeaks book has compromised security in any way," the paper said in a statement. "No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files."
