Anonymous, hacktivists helped WikiLeaks with 'Syrian Files'

Anonymous and other hacktivists have revealed that they provided WikiLeaks with more than two million e-mails released as "Syria Files" last week.

In a statement released by the hacktivist group on Saturday, Anonymous said that it had been assisting Syrian protesters for more than a year, since the first week of their revolution. It also revealed that the "Anonymous Op Syria" team had consisted of elements from Anonymous Syria, the reformed Lulzsec now known as Antisec and the Peoples Liberation Front.

The statement comes after WikiLeaks released more than two million e-mails from Syrian political figures, ministries and companies associated with the country last Thursday, dating from Aug. 2006 to Mar. 2012, on how Western countries dealt with the Assad regime.

In February, the hacker team had "worked day and night" to create a massive breach of multiple domains and dozens of servers inside Syria, the statement claimed.

"The data available had been so massive that downloading it had taken several weeks," the noted stated.

While they published some e-mails from the personal accounts of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife Asma back in March, most of this data had been passed on to WikiLeaks, an "organization that is supremely well equipped to handle a disclosure of this magnitude", it added.

"As long as the tyrant remains defiantly in power, Anonymous will continue to work relentlessly day and night--from every country and every timezone, to assist the courageous freedom fighters and activists in Syria," the statement said.

This is not the first time Anonymous and WikiLeaks have collaborated. Last December, Anonymous had hacked five million e-mails from security firm Stratfor, and reportedly sent those e-mails to WikiLeaks, which published them in February.