He came to international attention in after WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from Chelsea Manning , a United States Army intelligence analyst: [ 4 ] footage of a U. Assange has won multiple awards for publishing and journalism. Assange was raised in various places around Australia until his family settled in Melbourne in his middle teens. He became involved in the hacker community and was convicted for hacking in Publication of the leaks from Manning started in February In November Sweden wished to question Assange in an unrelated police investigation and sought to extradite him from the UK.
On 11 April , Assange's asylum was withdrawn following a series of disputes with Ecuadorian authorities. In , following a High Court ruling that granted Assange a full appeal to extradition, Assange and his lawyers negotiated a deal with the DOJ. Assange agreed to a plea deal with U. He pleaded guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U. Christine then became involved with Leif Meynell, also known as Leif Hamilton, whom Julian Assange later described as "a member of an Australian cult" called The Family.
Meynell and Christine Assange separated in Julian Assange lived in more than thirty Australian towns and cities during his childhood. He moved in with his girlfriend at age Assange studied programming , mathematics , and physics at Central Queensland University [ 45 ] and the University of Melbourne β , [ 35 ] [ 46 ] but did not complete a degree. Assange's nickname at the raves was "Prof". By , aged 16, Assange had become a skilled hacker [ 51 ] [ 52 ] under the name Mendax , [ 36 ] [ 53 ] [ 54 ] taken from Horace 's splendide mendax from Latin, "nobly untruthful".
According to Assange, "it involved some dodgy character who was alleging that we had stolen five hundred thousand dollars from Citibank". Ultimately, no charges were raised and his equipment was returned, but Assange "decided that it might be wise to be a bit more discreet".
In Assange used social engineering to get the password to Australia's Overseas Telecommunications Commission's mainframes. He and two others, known as "Trax" and "Prime Suspect", formed a hacking group called "the International Subversives". Assange wrote a program called Sycophant that allowed the International Subversives to conduct "massive attacks on the US military".
