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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

A Russian immigration source informed that the US intelligence agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has applied for political asylum in Russia. Few days back, Russian president Vladimir Putin has said Russia would never hand over Mr Snowden over to the United States but that if Snowden wants to stay in Russia he " must stop his work aimed at harming our American partners. " He initially fled from Hawaii to Hong Kong and then to Russia . The US has annulled his passport, and Ecuador, where he had hoped to get asylum, has been coy over offering him shelter. Sarah Harrison is an employee of anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks , who accompanied Mr Snowden on his trip from Hong Kong. " Snowden is not a Russian agent ", Putin said on Monday, and that Russian intelligence services were not working with the fugitive American, who is believed to remain in the transit area at a Moscow airport eight days after arriving from Hong Kong. Speaking at a news confe

The  ransomware industry surged in 2023  as it saw an alarming 55.5% increase in victims worldwide, reaching a staggering 5,070.  But 2024 is starting off showing a very different picture.  While the numbers skyrocketed in Q4 2023 with 1309 cases, in Q1 2024, the ransomware industry was down to 1,048 cases. This is a 22% decrease in ransomware attacks compared to Q4 2023. Figure 1: Victims per quarter There could be several reasons for this significant drop.  Reason 1: The Law Enforcement Intervention Firstly, law enforcement has upped the ante in 2024 with actions against both LockBit and ALPHV. The LockBit Arrests In February, an international operation named "Operation Cronos" culminated in the arrest of at least three associates of the infamous LockBit ransomware syndicate in Poland and Ukraine.  Law enforcement from multiple countries collaborated to take down LockBit's infrastructure. This included seizing their dark web domains and gaining access to their backend sys