BACKGROUND: WikiLeaks feasts on US government's leaky SIPRNet

By Christoph Dernbach Nov 29, 2010, 8:47 GMT

Berlin/Washington - The US government deemed the open internet much too insecure for the inter-agency transmission of classified documents, so in September 1991 the Department of Defense ordered the creation of the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet).

A secure, wide area computer network, SIPRNet carries Pentagon and State Department documents up to the second-highest level of secrecy. Though it has successfully resisted outside penetration, safeguards against internal breaches have evidently failed - to the delight of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

'Weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence, inattentive signal analysis... a perfect storm,' wrote PFC Bradley Manning, a 23-year-old US Army intelligence analyst who had access to SIPRNet while stationed in Iraq.

In an online chat in late May with former US computer hacker Adrian Lamo, Manning imagined the reaction by the US government to publication of hundreds of thousands of classified SIPRNet documents: '(Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public.'

Manning is seen as Wikileaks' most important source. He is alleged to have leaked a 2007 video of a US Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad. Taken by the aircraft's onboard camera, the video clearly shows the shooting deaths of 11 civilians, including two employees of the Reuters news agency.

Manning is also the prime suspect in the leak of more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables currently making headlines.

According to Lamo, Manning said he burned the secret files onto CDs during his Iraq posting and was able to smuggle them home undetected afterwards by labeling them 'music by Lady Gaga.' Logs of the chat between Lamo and Manning have been published by the US magazine Wired.

Manning was arrested in May and charged on July 5 by US military authorities with the unauthorized transfer and disclosure of classified information. If found guilty, he faces a maximum sentence of 52 years in prison.

Manning is not the only likely source of leaks from SIPRNet, which is accessible to some 2.5 million US soldiers and officials. About 850,000 Americans even have security clearance for documents classified 'top secret.'

If internal safeguards for SIPRNet are indeed as porous as reported, Secretary Clinton will not be spared nasty surprises in the future either.