WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange visited Gawker (or at least, its Web site) on Mondayto answer reader questions about his new book, When Google Met WikiLeaks.

. And while a lot has changed for Gawkers masthead and for Assange himself since he first rose to prominence, it would be remiss not to note Gawkersawkward history with Assange.

At least one Gawker commenter agreed with us:

The link leads here, to a post about Assanges television show.

Especially in the earlier days, there wasa tension for many sites in covering Assange and by extension, WikiLeaks and it was very much visible in the way Gawker chose to approach the subject.

On the one hand, WikiLeaks became famous because it facilitatedthe publication of several important, consequential stories about the security state by providing leaked classified documents to journalists.

On the other hand, WikiLeaks, the organization, has more and more existed as a support structure for the career of the man who founded it a man who is currently holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, avoiding extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges.

WikiLeaks and its supporters have argued that such criticism is a distraction from its mission.

In the past, Gawker (specifically, former Gawker writer Adrian Chen) has gone hard on the criticism against Assange for those reasons. But that tone has softened a little as his immediate newsworthiness waned.

Below is a recap:

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A brief history of Gawker’s awkward relationship with Gawker guest Julian Assange

Whistleblowing website Wikileaks has released part 4 of its Spyfiles, shedding light on German weaponised malware vendor FinFisher and its suite of products of the same name.

FinFisher used to be part of the UKs Gamma group. As part of the leaks, Wikileaks has released copies of the vendor's invoices and support tickets with many client names unmasked to show the extent of spying.

Mongolia, the recently elected chair of the Freedom Online Coalition, is one of FinFishers larger customers with 16. Its predecessor in the coalition, Estonia, was also one of the largest customers with 37 FinFisher licences.

Many of the clients names remains masked. In many cases the code name is unmasked when the client raises a tech support ticket complete with a description and screenshot of the problem.

For instance, customer 559458B5 was unmasked as Mongolia easily from its support tickets. Indeed one ticket complained to FinFisher that an infected payload aimed at future-mongolia.com was getting blocked. In what may make some breathe a sigh of relief for its show of incompetence, the attacker used his Gmail account, which was of the same name as his FinFisher login name and his real name. Gmail blocks executable payloads from being sent.

On the other hand, customer B206FF8C Singapore, was much more professional - and even raised a support ticket in the wake of the SSL Heartbleed bug to ensure that the FinFisher software and laptops themselves were updated to avoid leaking any information.

Other countries in the region that were identified include Vietnam, Pakistan and Australias New South Wales police.

Wikileaks also released copies of the actual FinFisher software in the hope that security analysts can challenge the secrecy and unaccountability of the company by analysing its internals to come up with detection techniques. New product brochures were also made available for download.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks Editor in Chief said, "FinFisher continues to operate brazenly from Germany selling weaponized surveillance malware to some of the most abusive regimes in the world.

The Merkel government pretends to be concerned about privacy, but its actions speak otherwise. Why does the Merkel government continue to protect FinFisher? This full data release will help the technical community build tools to protect people from FinFisher including by tracking down its command and control centers.

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Wikileaks unmasks German duplicity with new leak

It would be too much to say that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange feels optimistic. He's been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for more than two years now, withcameras and police"a 3 million surveillance operation," he calls itjust meters away.

"There's a sense of inevitability now," Assange saidwhen we asked if his situation mightchange.

Assange: "Thesituation is clarifying politically and legally."

Ars: "I just want to be clear on this pointare you saying you're hopeful you'll be free soon?"

Assange: "I wouldn't say hopeful. I would say it's inevitable. It's inevitable that we will win the diplomatic standoff we're in now."

It's getting late in London, where Assange is doing a barrage of press interviews on the eve his new book, When Google Met Wikileaks(it goes on sale in the US later this week). We called at the agreed upon time, and a man who didn't identify himself answered the number, which was for a Londoncell phone. He saidcall back in five minutes, and onlythen was the phone finally handedto Assange.

We're supposed to focus on thebook.But first, we want to know whatlife trapped in the embassy involveswhere doeshe eat, sleep, do laundry?What isthe roomhe's was in now like?

"For security reasons, I can't tell you which sections of the embassy I utilize," he said. "As to the rest, in a way, it's a perfectly normal situation. In another way, it's one of the most abnormal, unusual situationsthat someone can find themselves in."

Assange usheredWikiLeaks through severalmassive leaks of secret US government reports and a tumultuous relationship with some prominent newspapers. First came the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of military reportsonthe Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, thena leak of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables from the State Department.

Hesought asylum from Ecuador when he was on theverge of being extraditedto Sweden to face sexual-assault charges in that nation. If he leaves the embassy, he'll be arrested, although it isn't clear where he'll be sent first. It'swidely assumed the US has an ongoing investigation intoAssange over the leaks.

Read more:
Julian Assange on Snowden, disliking Google, and his “inevitable” freedom

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WikiLeaks is making the controversial FinFisher commercial spyware tool available for download as part of the latest in a series of leaks that have put the operations of the controversial business under the microscope.

FinFisher, which was part of UK-based Gamma Group International until late 2013 before relocating to Germany, develops and sells computer intrusion systems, software exploits and remote monitoring systems that can be used to spy on people using desktops and smartphones.

Multiple platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux) and smartphone OSes (Android, BlackBerry and, yes, iOS) are supported by malware used by police and intelligence agencies around the world to spy on political dissidents, journalists and others.

FinFisher Relay and FinSpy Proxy are the components of the FinFisher suite designed to collect data from infected victims and deliver it to surveillance operators, respectively. WikiLeaks has published both alongside previously unreleased copies of the FinFisher FinSpy PC spyware for Windows. This software is designed to be surreptitiously installed on a Windows computer before being used to silently intercept files and communications, such as Skype calls, emails, video and audio.

A copy of the code for FinSpy Master, which is used to control data collection, has also been published by Julian Assange's whistleblowing site.

WikiLeaks argues that publishing the code will help security researchers to track down more FinFisher control nodes.

Assange, WikiLeaker in chief, said: "FinFisher continues to operate brazenly from Germany selling weaponised surveillance malware to some of the most abusive regimes in the world. The Merkel government pretends to be concerned about privacy, but its actions speak otherwise. Why does the Merkel government continue to protect FinFisher? This full data release will help the technical community build tools to protect people from FinFisher including by tracking down its command and control centers."

Privacy and human rights activists, including WikiLeaks and Citizen Lab, have been documenting FinFisher's business and technology since 2011.

WikiLeaks latest leaks include copies of the vendor's invoices and support tickets, which unmask the names of many of its clients and how much they've paid for the controversial technology. Among the largest customers is Mongolia, which has been recently selected as new chair of the Freedom Online Coalition.

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Yawn, Wikileaks, we already knew about FinFisher. But these software binaries...

JC Torres

WikiLeaks has dropped another bombshell, this time in the form of software, for those already weary of governments all over the world spying on people, whether they be their citizens for not. It is giving out malware developed by German company FinFisher in the hopes that countermeasures can be developed to give its intended targets, journalists, activists, and political dissidents, a fighting chance.

According to WikiLeaks, FinFisher is a German outfit, formerly part of a UK company, that has been developing malware, particularly intrusion software, that can intercept communications and data from almost all major operating systems, whether they be desktop or mobile. This software is then bought by government intelligence agencies who then particularly target journalists and activists. FinFisher's name first surfaced in WikiLeak's 2011 disclosure.

That governments would use such software to spy on people isn't exactly news, especially after the WikiLeaks and Snowden leaks. What the group found to be worrying, if not despicable, is that the company continues to operate today and from Germany in fact, even after its government's public position against spying. That FinFisher sells this kind of software to what WikiLeaks describes as the most abusive regimes in the world is also a major source of concern.

This FinFisher malware is being made available as part of the group's SpyFiles collection, now in its fourth incarnation. The files also include a database of FinFisher's customers. Quite ironically, that list names Mongolia as one of the largest buyers, with 16 licenses associated with it. The country has just recently been selected as the chair of the Freedom Online Coalition, a group made up of governments trying to work towards protecting basic human rights, which include freedom of expression and online privacy.

SOURCE: WikiLeaks

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WikiLeaks reveals malware targeting journalists, activists

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Julian Assange has alleged that Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto asked WikiLeaks not to use the cryptocurrency as a means of raising funds, for fear of attracting unwanted attention.

The allegation surfaced in a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session Assange conducted to promote a new book. In that session he offers this extract from the new tome:

On 5 December 2010, just after VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Amazon, and other financial companies started denying service to WikiLeaks, a debate broke out on the official web forum for Bitcoin about the risk that donations to WikiLeaks using Bitcoin could provoke unwanted government interest in the then nascent crypto-currency. 'Basically, bring it on,' wrote one poster. 'Satoshi Nakamoto,' the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, responded: No, dont bring it on. The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way. I make this appeal to WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage.

Assange's answer goes on to state that WikiLeaks read and agreed with Satoshis analysis, and decided to put off the launch of a Bitcoin donation channel until the currency had become more established.

That decision came in 2011, a time Assange says it did so at the time of the currency's first boom. In other words, once it had sufficient momentum that association with Assange wouldn't attract nasty blowback.

Assange looks like he is trying to claim that the delay in BTC adoption wasn't just a kindness, but a visionary, secrecy-busting act, because:

Bitcoin's real innovation is a globally verifiable proof publishing at a certain time. The whole system is built on that concept and many other systems can also be built on it. The blockchain nails down history, breaking Orwell's dictum of 'He who controls the present controls the past and he who controls the past controls the future'.

Those are some big claims, and an unusual analysis of Bitcoin. Never mind a contentious one given the many security SNAFUs the crypto-currency has endured.

Feel free to write your own draft of history Global or Assange's as a comment.

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I saved Bitcoin and the PERFECT DRAFT OF HISTORY, says Assange