Ecuadorian officials claim the country has suffered some40 million cyber attackssince it permit UK police to forcibly remove Wikileaks founder Julian Assange from their embassy in London , agree to Agence France - Presse .

According to AFP , the 40 million turn comes courtesy of Ecuador ’s deputy diplomatic minister for selective information and communicating technologies , Patricio Real , who tell the approach start short after thearrest on April 11 :

Patricio Real , Ecuador ’s deputy government minister for information and communicating applied science , said the attacks , which began on Thursday , had “ chiefly come from the United States , Brazil , Holland , Germany , Romania , France , Austria and the United Kingdom , ” as well as from the South American country itself .

Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, 2017.

Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, 2017.Photo: Matt Dunham (AP)

… Javier Jara , undersecretary of the electronic government section of the telecommunication ministry , pronounce the nation had sustain “ volumetric attacks ” that blocked access to the internet take after “ threats from those groups linked to Julian Assange . ”

Volumetric attacks are a type ofdistributed denial of service attack , in which attackers flood servers with request in an attack to surcharge them and prevent accession by lawful users ; the 40 million number should be understood not as the act of severally organise attack , but the cumulative number of automated attempt to disrupt targeted systems . Sites for the foreign ministry , central bank , President Lenin Moreno ’s office staff , tax authorities , and myriad other government websites were targeted , AFP wrote .

No mental hospital account successful attempts to steal or destroy datum , the news program delegacy tote up .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

Assange , the founder of international non - profit and secret - leak organisation Wikileaks , had originally sought and received asylum in the embassy in 2012 . At the clock time , UK sanction were seek to deliver Assange to Sweden , where authorities were investigate two separate accounts he had committed sexual assault and rape ; Assange sought to present the allegation as a pretext to fix his extradition to the U.S. , where he would face prosecution for leak government activity and military secret .

Swedish authorities afterwards neglect the investigation , but the UK stay to seek his pinch for skipping bond . Assange remain in the embassy , over clock time manifestly wear out Ecuador ’s forbearance ; while he was there , Wikileaks liberate cache of whoop emails fromDemocratic Party email system , Assange ’s Twitter DMs with Donald Trump Jr. ( in which hebegged for an ambassadorship ) leaked , and the official Wikileaks Twitter account beganposting far - right diatribes .

The embassy reportedly dilute off his internet access in 2018 foralleged political tampering , which the government say abide by requests that he stop damage its relationship with other countries . Moreno has consult to Assange as an “ inherited problem ” from his predecessor , Rafael Correa , and charge Assange ofpersonally hack him .

William Duplessie

As it turn out , the U.S. didsecretly charge Assangewith machinate with Chelsea Manning in an attempt to break into a protected Department of Defense computing gadget net ( the Secret cyberspace Protocol internet , SIPRNet ) using another username . That effort give out , but Manning finally provided Wikileaks with of C of chiliad of government file , which it released in 2010 . Those rate from diplomatical cable system to other data implicate U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan in covering up civilian casualties , enabling torment , and perhaps most infamously , open firein Baghdad from Apache gunships , killing at least a dozen , admit two Reuters journalists .

The escape chagrin the U.S. governing , and there hasbeen considerable discussionover whether Assange really conspired with Manning to cave in into SIPRNet or the billing are just revenge served cold . If Assange is extradite to the U.S. and convicted , he faces a maximum offive years in prisonon those charge . Asthe Verge remark , the bill of indictment is unusually weak on the evidence ( and possibly outside the statute of limitations ) , thoughCBS tidings reportedprosecutors are matter additional charges .

If extradite on the specific hacking flush alone , however , the Verge report that legal expert say the U.S. can not simply slap him with extra charges like espionage — which Assange ’s lawyers claim could earn him the death penalty .

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[ AFP ]

CybersecurityecuadorHackersHackingJulian AssangeTechnologyWikiLeaks

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