Is WikiLeaks Hacking for Secrets?

In April 2009 the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks published a secret U.S. military document detailing technological capabilities of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. In an online post explaining how it obtained the information, WikiLeaks indicated only that it came from "a source." It was another coup for WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, who describes the far-flung organization—it has no fixed domicile—as a secure digital drop box for disaffected insiders. He has repeatedly said WikiLeaks doesn't actively obtain classified documents but rather provides a platform for others who have confidential information to reveal for the public good.

Except that WikiLeaks, according to Internet security company Tiversa, appears to have hunted down that military document itself. Tiversa says the group may have exploited a feature of file-sharing applications such as LimeWire and Kazaa that are often used to swap pirated copies of movies and music for free. If, for example, a Pentagon employee were to log on to such a peer-to-peer network (an array of disparate computers with no central hub) to download a movie, he could possibly expose every last e-mail and spreadsheet on his PC to prying eyes. That's because some peer-to-peer, or P2P, applications may scan users' hard drives for shareable files. Not turning that feature off, or specifying which parts of the hard drive may be searched, leaves the door wide open.