Julian Assange | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been freed in the U.K. and has departed the country after serving more than five years in a maximum security prison at Belmarsh for what was described by the U.S. government as the "largest compromises of classified information" in its history. Capping off a 14-year legal saga, Assange, 52, pleaded guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defense documents. He is due to be sentenced to 62 months of time already served in the Pacific island of Saipan later this week. According to the Associated Press , the hearing is taking place there because of Assange's "opposition to traveling to the continental U.S. and the court's proximity to Australia." "This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organizers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations," WikiLeaks said in a...

A British court has rejected the U.S. government's request to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the country on charges pertaining to illegally obtaining and sharing classified material related to national security. In a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court today, Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied the extradition on the grounds that Assange is a suicide risk and extradition to the U.S. prison system would be oppressive. "I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America," judge Baraitser  said  in a 132-page ruling. The U.S. government is expected to appeal the decision. The case against Assange centers on WikiLeaks' publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, in 2010 and 2011. The documents include "approximately 90,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports, 400,0...

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The United States government has filed a superseding indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accusing him of collaborating with computer hackers, including those affiliated with the infamous LulzSec and "Anonymous" hacking groups. The new superseding indictment does not contain any additional charges beyond the prior 18-count indictment filed against Assange in May 2019, but it does "broaden the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged," the DoJ said. In May 2019, Assange was charged with 18 counts under the old U.S. Espionage Act for unlawfully publishing classified military and diplomatic documents on his popular WikiLeaks website in 2010, which he obtained from former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. Assange has been alleged to have obtained those classified documents by conspiring with Manning to crack a password hash to a classified U.S. Department of Defense comput...

The United States Justice Department has unveiled charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with 17 new counts on the alleged violation of the Espionage Act by publishing classified information through WikiLeaks website. If convicted for all counts, Assange could face a maximum sentence of 175 years in U.S. prison for his "alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States." Assange was arrested last month in London after Ecuador abruptly withdrew his asylum and later sentenced to 50 weeks in U.K. prison for breaching his bail conditions in 2012. The 47-year-old is currently facing extradition to the United States for his role in publishing thousands of classified diplomatic and military documents on WikiLeaks in 2010 that embarrassed the U.S. governments across the world. Though the previous indictment charged Assange with just one count of helping former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning c...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been sentenced to 50 weeks—for almost a year—in prison by a London court for breaching his bail conditions in 2012 and taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy for nearly 7 years. The 47-year-old Assange was arrested last month by London's Metropolitan Police Service after the Ecuadorian government suddenly withdrew his political asylum . Within hours of his arrest, Assange was convicted at Westminster Magistrates' Court of skipping bail in June 2012 after an extradition order to Sweden over claims of sexual assault and rape allegations made by two women. Although Sweden dropped its preliminary investigation into the rape accusation against Julian Assange in 2017, Assange chose not to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy due to fears of extradition to the United States. In the Southwark Crown Court today Judge Deborah Taylor gave Assange a sentence close to the maximum of a year in custody, saying it was hard to "envisage a more ser...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London—that's almost seven years after he took refuge in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault case. According to a short note released by London's Metropolitan Police Service, Assange was arrested immediately after the Ecuadorian government today withdraws his political asylum. Assange has now been taken into custody at a central London police station, from where he will be presented before Westminster Magistrates' Court as soon as possible. U.S. Department of Justice also confirmed today that Assange would face extradition proceedings for his alleged role in "one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States." "The indictment [unsealed today] alleges that in March 2010, Assange engaged in a conspiracy with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army, to assist Manning in cracki...

Has Wikileaks founder Julian Assange officially been charged with any unspecified criminal offense in the United States? — YES United States prosecutors have accidentally revealed the existence of criminal charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a recently unsealed court filing in an unrelated ongoing sex crime case in the Eastern District of Virginia. Assistant US Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer, who made this disclosure on August 22, urged the judge to keep the indictment [ pdf ] prepared against Assange sealed (secret) "due to the sophistication of the defendant, and the publicity surrounding the case." Dwyer is assigned to the WikiLeaks case. Dwyer also said the charges would "need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges" in the indictment and can, therefore "no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter." WikiLeaks, the website that published thousands of classified U.S. government do...

Julian Assange, the founder of popular whistleblower website WikiLeaks, is stepping down from the position of editor-in-chief of the organisation under "extraordinary circumstances." Assange, the 47-year-old Australian hacker, founded WikiLeaks in 2006 and has since made many high-profile leaks, exposing 'dirty' secrets of several individuals, political parties as well as government organisations across the world. Assange has been forced to live in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since June 2012, after he was granted asylum by the Ecuador government when a British court ordered his extradition to Sweden to face questioning sexual assault and rape. Ecuador has cut Assange off the Internet and any communication with the outside world except for his lawyers since late March this year, making it difficult for him to do his job of editor-in-chief to run WikiLeaks. Wikileaks Appoints Its New Editor-in-Chief According to a recent tweet from Wikileaks, those ...

After protecting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for almost six years, Ecuador is now planning to withdraw its political asylum, probably next week, and eject him from its London embassy—eventually would turn him over to the British authorities. Lenín Moreno, the newly-elected President of Ecuador, has arrived in London this Friday to give a speech at Global Disability Summit on 24 July 2018. However, media reports suggest the actual purpose of the President's visit is to finalize a deal with UK government to withdraw its asylum protection of Assange. According to RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and the Intercept 's Glenn Greenwald, multiple sources close to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry and the President's office have confirmed that Julian Assange will be handed over to Britain in the coming weeks or even days. Julian Assange, 47, has been living in Ecuador's London embassy since June 2012, when he was granted asylum by the Ecuador government after a B...

This week WikiLeaks published "Vault 7" — a roughly 8,761 documents and files claiming to detail surveillance tools and tactics of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The leak outlined a broad range of flaws in smartphones and other devices that the agency uses to intercept communications and spy on its targets, making even China and Germany worried about the CIA's ability to hack all manner of devices. While WikiLeaks promised the "Vault 7" release is less than one percent of its 'Year Zero' disclosure, and there's more to come, we are here with some new developments on the CIA leak. But, before knowing about the latest developments in the CIA hacking tool leak, I would suggest you read my previous piece to know 10 important things about 'WikiLeaks-CIA Leak .' We believe the US intelligence agencies have access to much bigger technical resources and cyber capabilities than the leak exposed in the leak. The dump so far just ...

With just two days before the presidential election, WikiLeaks late Sunday night published a new trove of emails apparently hacked from the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The most recent dump of more than 8,000 emails came after the whistleblowing site, on a daily basis over last four weeks, has already leaked over 50,000 emails stolen from the key figure in the DNC – Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. However, this time, not everything went as planned by WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks early Monday morning announced on Twitter that shortly after the release of hacked DNC emails the organization was the target of a major Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. What's more?  Soon after WikiLeaks reported the DDoS attack on its email publication servers, Twitter also went down, and the outage lasts for at least 30 minutes. According to a status monitor, the Twitter outage began at around 6.45am GMT and continued for nearly half an hour, though report...

Early Monday, Whistleblowing site WikiLeaks tweeted that the internet connection of its co-founder, Julian Assange, was intentionally cut down , for which it blamed an unidentified " state party ." But most surprisingly, it was Ecuador who was behind the act. WikiLeaks has confirmed that its founder Julian Assange 's Internet access was cut down in its London embassy by the government of Ecuador on Saturday. The move was in response to the organization's publication of another batch of leaked emails related to US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. "We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange's internet access Saturday, 5 pm GMT, shortly after [the] publication of Clinton's Goldman Sachs [speeches]," WikiLeaks tweeted . Assange has been living in Ecuador's London embassy since June 2012, when he was granted asylum by the Ecuador government after a British court ordered his extradition to Sweden to face questioning on a rape allegation....

Don't worry — Julian Assange is alive and kicking! But his Internet connection is dead. Earlier today, Wikileaks tweeted that its co-founder, Julian Assange, had his internet connection intentionally cut by an unidentified " state party ." The non-profit organization said it had " activated appropriate contingency plans ," giving no further explanation. The tweet came after Wikileaks posted a series of three cryptic tweets , each containing a 64-character code. In no time, the tweets sparked bizarre rumors that Julian Assange has died. The tweets referenced Ecuador, Secretary of State John Kerry and the United Kingdom's Foreign Commonwealth Office. What exactly are those Mysterious Wikileaks Tweets? Some users on Twitter, Reddit, and various discussion forums speculated that the tweets in question were the result of a " dead man's switch " that has been triggered in the event of Julian Assange's untimely death. Users on Twitter a...

Wikileaks completed its 10 years today, and within this timespan, the whistleblower site has published over 10 million documents, and there's more to come. In the name of celebration of its 10th Anniversary, Wikileaks promises to leak documents pertaining to Google, United States presidential election and more over the next ten weeks. Speaking by video link to an anniversary news conference at the Volksbuhne Theater in Berlin on Tuesday morning, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange eagerly announced his plans to release a series of publications every week for the next 10 weeks. The upcoming leaks will include "significant material" related to Google, the US presidential election, military operations, arms trading and, the hot topic of past few years, mass surveillance. Assange also promised to publish all documents related to the US presidential race before the election day on November 8. "There is an enormous expectation in the United States," Assange said f...

There's a lot more to come from the DNC Hack. The Associated Press confirmed yesterday that the computer systems used by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign were hacked as part of the recent Democratic National Convention (DNC) hack. Last week's email dump containing almost 20,000 emails from top DNC officials was just the beginning, which led DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign as the group's leader, as WikiLeaks announced that it was part one of its new Hillary Leaks series. This suggests WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange has had his hands on more data from the DNC hack that, according to him, could eventually result in the arrest of Hillary Clinton. Assange — Wikileaks' Next Leak will lead to Arrest of Hillary Clinton In an interview with Robert Preston of ITV last month, Assange made it clear that he hopes to harm Hillary Clinton's chances from becoming president of the United States, opposing her candidacy on both policies as well...

VICTORY! As a result of the legal action against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by both British and Swedish Governments, he has been arbitrarily detained by the United Kingdom and Sweden since his arrest in London over five years ago. However, Assange filed a complaint against both the governments in September 2014 that has been considered by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Last week, Assange gave a statement that if the ruling comes against him, then he will surrender himself to Britain . But, Victory! The decision is in favor of Assange. The UN group has ruled that the UK and Swedish authorities had illegally detained Assange in violation of their international human rights obligations. Julian Assange should be released immediately and allowed to leave the embassy as well as both the UK and Sweden should compensate him for his "deprivation of liberty", the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said in a statement ...

The decision of the United Nations investigation into the Julian Assange case is set to be revealed and could order the release of Wikileaks founder on February 5 . " BREAKING: UN set to announce decision on #Assange's release on Friday, "BREAKING: UN set to announce decision on #Assange's release on Friday," Wikileaks has tweeted . Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for over 3 years, after being granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government of the South American country. Assange has been residing in the embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition: First to Sweden where he is facing sexual assault allegations, which he has always denied. Ultimately to the United States where he could face cyber espionage charges for publishing classified US military and diplomat documents via his website Wikileaks. The leak of publishing secret documents has amounted to the largest information leak in United States history ...

Breaking.... WikiLeaks, The Anti-secrecy and transparency organization, claims to have obtained the contents of CIA Director John Brennan 's personal AOL email account. Also, Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks , has promised to publish them soon on their website. Earlier this week, Brennan's personal email account was hacked by an anonymous self-described high school student, who swiped sensitive top-secret data from it. The teenager also posted a partial Spreadsheet filled with the supposed names, email addresses, phone numbers and Social Security numbers (SSNs) of 2,611 former and current government intelligence officials. Also Read:   High school Student Hacked Into CIA Director's Personal Email Account Anonymous Teenage Hacker is motivated by opposition to American foreign policy, particularly in respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict, according to an interview. The Central Intelligence Agency did not confirm whether the hack happened...