wikileaks

LONDON -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange today addressed his supporters and the media from his haven in the Ecuadorian embassy here, days after he was granted asylum by the Latin American country.

Assange, who faces extradition to Sweden, spoke for 10 minutes before retreating inside the building, and called for an end to the U.S.-led "witch-hunt" against WikiLeaks, its staff, and its supporters.

He described Ecuador's move to grant him asylum as "courageous" and outlined a number of points he wished to see in the future. But one of the stipulations of his … Read more

An anti-WikiLeaks hacking group has taken credit for launching a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the Russian news site RT.com.

The organization, which calls itself Anti Leaks, today tweeted out to followers that it was "behind the DDoS attack on RT.com." Although the organization didn't explicitly say why it decided to attack RT, it included in its tweet a "#FreePussyRiot" hashtag.

The hashtag refers to the name of a Russian, all-female punk rock band. The band members were arrested in March after performing a "punk prayer" in Moscow's … Read more

LONDON -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government after taking refuge in its London embassy on June 19.

The asylum decision follows a U.K. Supreme Court ruling in May authorizing Assange's extradition to Sweden to face questioning over alleged sexual crimes.

Ecuadorian foreign minister Ricardo Patino said his government had given the matter "extreme and careful consideration."

Patino said that extensive talks were held with the U.K. to seek assurances that Assange would not be extradited to a third country -- read, the U.S. -- but that … Read more

Police showed up at Ecuador's London embassy this evening, hours after the Ecuadorian government accused the U.K. government of threatening a raid to nab Wikileaks editor Julian Assange.

A live video feed from citizen journalist James Albury showed police in the outer lobby of the red brick building, which is also home to private apartments and Columbia's embassy. But it wasn't clear whether police had entered the Ecuadorian embassy itself, which would be an extreme breach of diplomatic protocol.

Ecuador's embassy said in a statement that:

Updated at 2:45 p.m. PT

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange reportedly has been granted asylum by the Ecuadorean government.

"Ecuador will grant asylum to Julian Assange," an unnamed official in the Ecuadorean capital of Quito told the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper today. No official announcement, however, has been made.

Assange has been camped out in Ecuador's embassy in London for the last two months as the country considers his asylum request, which is based in part on a claim that his native Australia has effectively abandoned him.

The British courts have ordered that Assange be … Read more

It's unclear who or what is after WikiLeaks, but the document-leaking organization claims someone is.

According to its Twitter feed, the organization has sustained a several-day Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that has left its Web site effectually inoperable.

"The attack is well over 10Gbits/second sustained on the main WikiLeaks domains," read one of several tweets the organization posted on Friday. "The bandwidth used is so huge it is impossible to filter without specialized hardware, however... the DDoS is not simple bulk UDP or ICMP packet flooding, so most hardware filters won't work … Read more

WikiLeaks, the highly controversial whistleblowing group, has begun publishing more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries, and associated companies.

WikiLeaks says the data derives from 680 Syria-related entities or domain names, including those from the ministries of presidential affairs, foreign affairs, finance, information, transport, and culture.

Today's publication of dozens of emails mark the first cache released, with more to be published over the coming months. A number of media outlets are working in partnership with Wikileaks, including the Associated Press.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the Syrian government will not be the only ones facing … Read more

Ecuador is considering a political asylum request from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Reuters reported today.

Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino told reporters that the country is "studying and analyzing the request."

Assange faces extradition from the U.K. to Sweden over alleged sex crimes after Britain's Supreme Court ruled against his appeal late last month.

BNO News reported that Assange is seeking asylum due to the "abandonment" of his home country of Australia, according to a Google Translate version of a statement from Assange.

Someone is angry at whistle-blower site WikiLeaks and Swedish BitTorrent file-sharing site Pirate Bay. Both sites have been battling distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks this week, but it's not clear who is behind the attacks and why they are being targeted. The sites appear to be up now.

Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks have been the cause celebre of hackers affiliated with groups like Anonymous, so much so that their opponents -- including government agencies and movie industry trade groups -- have found themselves to be targets of DDoS attacks in the past.

Yesterday, WikiLeaks tweeted that it "has been … Read more