A WikiLeaks file containing the original leaked US State Department cables has inadvertently been released onto the Internet. The documents have not been edited to protect sources, meaning that the lives of informants could be at risk. 
 
 The ongoing conflict between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his former German spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg has led to the accidental release of confidential data that was in WikiLeaks' possession. Since the beginning of the year, an encrypted file has been circulating on the Internet containing the collection of around 251,000 US State Department documents that WikiLeaks obtained in spring 2010 and made public in November 2010. 
 
 The release of the file could potentially endanger the informants mentioned in the documents, many of whom live in countries whose governments are hostile to the US. The confidential diplomatic cables were redacted before publication to protect sources, but the file on the Internet contains the original, unedited documents. 
 
 In the summer of 2010, Assange stored the password-protected file containing the cables in a concealed location on a WikiLeaks server. He gave the password to an external contact to allow him access to the material contained in the file. 
 
 When Domscheit-Berg left the organization in September 2010 together with a German programmer, the two men took the contents of the server with them, including the encrypted file containing the documents. As a result, Assange no longer had access to the file. 
 
 Hidden Directory 
 
 At the end of 2010, Domscheit-Berg finally returned to WikiLeaks a collection of various files that he had taken with him, including the encrypted cables. Shortly afterwards, WikiLeaks supporters released a copy of this data collection onto the Internet as a kind of public archive of the documents that WikiLeaks had previously published. The supporters clearly did not realize, however, that the data contained the original cables, as the file was not only encrypted but concealed in a hidden subdirectory. 
 
 Then, in the spring of 2011, Assange's external contact made public the password that he had received from Assange without realizing that this would allow access to the unredacted US cables. The slip-up remained undetected for several months. Members of OpenLeaks, the rival whistleblower organization recently set up by Domscheit-Berg, have now drawn attention to the lapse. They say it proves Domscheit-Berg's allegation, which he has been making for months, that data held by WikiLeaks is "not secure." 
 
 A number of media organizations, including SPIEGEL, first reported on the contents of the leaked cables in November 2010. All the publications made sure to redact the documents to obscure the name of informants in particularly sensitive positions to protect them from retaliation. A number of the files were entirely withheld from publication to avoid endangering sources. 
 
 Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Assange gave the password to an associate of his. In reality, it was an external contact. We have corrected the article accordingly. ||||| A security breach has led to the WikiLeaks archive of 251,000 secret US diplomatic cables being made available online, without redaction to protect sources. 
 
 WikiLeaks has been releasing the cables over nine months by partnering with mainstream media organisations. 
 
 Selected cables have been published without sensitive information that could lead to the identification of informants or other at-risk individuals. 
 
 The US government warned last year that such a release could lead to US informants, human rights activists and others being placed at risk of harm or detention. 
 
 A Twitter user has now published a link to the full, unredacted database of embassy cables. The user is believed to have found the information after acting on hints published in several media outlets and on the WikiLeaks Twitter feed, all of which cited a member of rival whistleblowing website OpenLeaks as the original source of the tipoffs. 
 
 The Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El Pais were the first five news organisations to publish stories based on the documents, allegedly leaked by US soldier Bradley Manning, in December 2010. 
 
 WikiLeaks published a statement blaming the documents' release on the Guardian's book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, by investigations editor David Leigh and Luke Harding, published in February 2011. 
 
 The statement, released on WikiLeaks's official Twitter feed, alleged: "A Guardian journalist has, in a previously undetected act of gross negligence or malice, and in violation of a signed security agreement with the Guardian's editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, disclosed top secret decryption passwords to the entire, unredacted, WikiLeaks Cablegate archive. We have already spoken to the state department and commenced pre-litigation action. We will issue a formal statement in due course." The Guardian denies WikiLeaks's allegations. 
 
 WikiLeaks said it contacted the US state department on 25 August to warn that the full publication of cables may be imminent and to check whether the department's programme to notify those named in the documents had been completed. Julian Assange was said to have had a 75 minute phone conversation with Cliff Johnson, a legal advisor at the department, but was refused a face-to-face meeting to exchange further information. 
 
 The embassy cables were shared with the Guardian through a secure server for a period of hours, after which the server was taken offline and all files removed, as was previously agreed by both parties. This is considered a basic security precaution when handling sensitive files. But unknown to anyone at the Guardian, the same file with the same password was republished later on BitTorrent, a network typically used to distribute films and music. This file's contents were never publicised, nor was it linked online to WikiLeaks in any way. 
 
 A statement from the Guardian said: "It's nonsense to suggest the Guardian's WikiLeaks book has compromised security in any way. 
 
 "Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours. 
 
 "It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s) who created the database. 
 
 "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. That they didn't do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian's book."
– A file containing all of WikiLeaks’ 251,000 US State Department cables has—wait for it—leaked online, this time without the names of US sources redacted, meaning many of them could be in danger. The file leaked out thanks to some misunderstandings, some carelessness, and the feud between Julian Assange and former spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Der Spiegel reports. The leak was first reported in the German newsweekly Der Freitag, according to TechCrunch. When Domscheit-Berg left WikiLeaks in September 2010, he took the server containing the encrypted file of the original cables with him. When he returned a number of the files later that year, some WikiLeaks supporters dumped the data online—unaware that the file was tucked among the others. Even then it was still encrypted and hidden—until this spring, when an Assange contact revealed the password publicly, unaware it would allow access to the cables. Now, Domscheit-Berg’s rival group, OpenLeaks, is drawing attention to the lapse, to bolster its argument that WikiLeaks data isn’t secure.