DOJ Announces Broadened Scope of Charges Against WikiLeaks Founder
A federal grand jury returned a second superseding indictment this week charging WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with offenses relating to his involvement in the release of classified information. The indictment does not add any additional charges to the prior 18 count indictment, but broadens the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged.
According to the Department of Justice release, Assange recruited and agreed with hackers to commit computer intrusions to assist WikiLeaks.
The indictment reflects that Assange spoke at hacking conferences discussing his history as a “famous teenage hacker in Australia” to encourage others to hack information for WikiLeaks. For example, in 2009 Assange told the Hacking At Random conference that WikiLeaks had obtained nonpublic documents from the Congressional Research Service by exploiting “a small vulnerability” inside the document distribution system of the United States Congress, and then noted that “[t]his is what any one of you would find if you were actually looking.”
The indictment also details conversations between Assange and the leader of a hacking group LulzSec, who was cooperating with the FBI, which included lists of targets for LulzSec to hack, requests for target mail and documents, information on the most impactful hacked materials to release, and information WikiLeaks obtained and published from a data breach committed against an American intelligence consulting company by an “Anonymous” and LulzSec-affiliated hacker.
The indictment also alleges that Assange conspired with Army Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password hash to a classified Department of Defense computer.
If convicted, Assange faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on each count except for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, for which he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Assange is currently detained in the United Kingdom on an extradition request from the United States.