WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gave a password to an 'external contact' who leaked it. WikiLeaks sources revealed

WikiLeaks, an international open information organization, appears to have sprung a leak of its own, losing control of its full database of a quarter-million U.S. State Department cables and alarming officials by releasing the names of undercover diplomatic sources.

The organization had copies of classified, unredacted U.S. State Department cables that it kept on its servers. Unlike the cables previously released, the leaked copies are not censored to hide sensitive information — meaning that the names of informants and suspected intelligence agents are now exposed.


There are two components to the leak: one is the encrypted file that contains the massive amount of uncensored information that WikiLeaks holds, the second is the password that will decrypt the file. Both components are now available online through an apparently inadvertent action.

According to Germany’s Der Spiegel, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gave the file’s password to an “external contact” who proceeded to leak it online. This password could then be used to open an encrypted file that contains the information that WikiLeaks has been distributing. The encrypted file itself has been floating around online, and until now was useless.

The encrypted file contains more than 250,000 diplomatic cables that in many cases identify diplomatic sources, including activists, journalists and academics in dictatorial societies.

The leak of their most prized asset may explain WikiLeaks’s actions over the past few weeks. After months of piecemeal leaks dating to last November, WikiLeaks abruptly published a large amount of information last week. By Monday afternoon, the organization released more than 130,000 diplomatic cables, which is more than six times the amount it had previously disclosed.

A State Department spokesman, Michael A. Hammer, told The New York Times that the department would not comment on the authenticity of the documents released, except to say that the United States “strongly condemns any illegal disclosure of classified information.”