Ecuadorian Agencies Saw Over 40Mln Cyberattacks After Assange's Arrest - Reports

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Ecuador’s public institutions were subjected to more than 40 million cyberattacks after the country's authorities decided to revoke asylum from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, letting UK police in to arrest him, the Comercio newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing Ecuadorian Deputy Communications Minister Patricio Real.

The attackers targeted websites of the presidential administration, foreign ministry, interior ministry, central bank and tax agency, attempting to make them inaccessible to users. No data theft has been reported.

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According to the deputy minister, the hackers were not identified, but the IP addresses and servers from which the attacks were carried out are hosted in the United States, Brazil, Romania, France, the United Kingdom and Ecuador.

Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno has accused Assange of repeatedly violating the conditions of his seven years of stay at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. On April 11, the WikiLeaks founder was arrested at the diplomatic mission on US extradition order. Assange now faces the threat of extradition to the United States on charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and could get up to five years in jail.

Since 2012, Assange had been residing in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced a probe over allegations of sexual offenses. While the Swedish police dropped the investigation in 2017, Assange was still wary of being extradited to the United States.

Assange gained fame after WikiLeaks published a large number of classified documents, including some that exposed abuses of power and war crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.