The Jester (hacktivist) force WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to set foot on UK soil and face potential extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault charges. On October 21, 2016, the Jester took responsibility for defacing the official website of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The "hack" was in retaliation for a series of DDOS attacks earlier in the week that targeted major DNS provider Dyn. In December 2011, T. J. O'Connor, a research analyst in the Information Technology and Operations Center (ITOC), produced a comprehensive report for the SANS Institute detailing the history of The Jester's hacking campaigns titled "The Jester Dynamic:
Julian Assange didn't think this was anything more than just distracting." Eventually, the plan was not pursued and, under Assange's advice, Snowden sought asylum in Russia. Paris newspaper "Le Monde", in its edition of 3 July 2015, published an open letter from Assange to French President François Hollande in which Assange urged the French government to grant him refugee status. Assange wrote that "only France now has the ability to offer me the necessary protection against, and exclusively against, the political persecution that I am currently the object of." In the letter Assange wrote, "By welcoming me, France would fulfill a humanitarian