[jacobwcarlson]

> So a spammy email in one of the thousands leaked happened to contained malware? And this is newsworthy why?

Because it's another example of the unconscionable lack of attention to detail that Wikileaks pays when putting out these dumps. Not quite at the level of outing gay Saudis and rape victims (putting them at risk of death), but still just very amateurish.

[moolcool]

Is it a lack of attention? I don't think a virus in a collection of leaked emails is a major threat since you'd be a fool to execute it. On the other hand, it might be useful for researchers if the virus was written to specifically target somebody.

[Twirrim]

It would hardly take any time to run the trove through a virus scanner, and it wouldn't even need someone to be sitting over it nannying it through the process.

[moolcool]

My point is that they shouldn't delete the viruses though. Someone going through the archives probably won't open a random executable from a zip file they stumble across, but a security researcher might want to examine the kinds of malware the leak subject might be exposed to. This is especially the case given we have no idea how many parties (and which parties) had access to these servers.

[ryanlol]

But why? There's no legitimate reason for wikileaks to do that.

[mynewtb]

A dump should not be tampered with. How are you going to verify what truly is malware and what is not, and how malware in itself is not of importance?

[wodencafe]

> still just very amateurish.

Especially considering how long they've been releasing these data dumps.

[nthcolumn]

I guess that is because they don't get paid.

[vog]

They receive donations, though. Depending on how they receive that okay, this may count as payment for their work.

[jandrese]

I guess that does technically make them amateurs.