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 Russian propaganda. Assange was named as a defendant in the April 20, 2018 lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee with regard to the hacking of its emails in 2016. The DNC's filing called this a "brazen attack on American democracy", referring to the alleged activities of WikiLeaks and Russian agents together. The WikiLeaks editor in chief Kristinn Hrafnsson stated that "The DNC lawsuit is a litmus test for press freedoms. The suit claims that the scandalous emails of powerful political operatives are 'trade secrets' and cannot be published. If this precedent is set it will be the end of