Julian Assange, born in Australia in 1971, is a computer programmer by trade who has been involved in hacking schemes, targeting the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, the U.S. Navy and several private American companies.
In 2006, he founded the website WikiLeaks, which published secret information leaked to the site by whistleblowers.
WikiLeaks has published massive dumps of unredacted diplomatic cables, thousands contained sensitive information, and classified intelligence documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2007, it uploaded a U.S. Army manual for dealing with prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, WikiLeaks began publishing thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee. It was very embarrassing to the party.