Age, Biography, and Wiki
Julian Assange was born on July 3, 1971, making him 53 years old as of early 2025. He is an Australian-born editor, publisher, and activist who rose to international prominence with WikiLeaks in 2010. Assange's early life involved frequent travel due to his parents' involvement in a touring theater troupe. He was referred to as "Australia's most famous ethical computer hacker" during his youth.
| Occupation | Computer Programmer |
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| Date of Birth | 3 July 1971 |
| Age | 54 Years |
| Birth Place | Townsville, Queensland, Australia |
| Horoscope | Cancer |
| Country | Australia |
Height, Weight & Measurements
While specific details about Julian Assange's height and weight are not publicly emphasized, his public appearances often highlight his distinctive appearance, notably his white hair.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Assange has been married and has a son, but his personal life has been less publicly discussed in recent years, with more focus on his professional activities and legal challenges.
When Julian was a year old his mother married Brett Assange, an actor with whom she ran a small theatre company and whom Julian Assange regards as his father (choosing Assange as his surname). Christine and Brett Assange divorced around 1979. 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 1982.
Julian Assange lived in more than thirty Australian towns and cities during his childhood. He attended several schools, including Goolmangar Primary School in New South Wales (1979–1983) and Townsville State High School in Queensland as well as being schooled at home. In his mid-teens, he settled with his mother and half-brother in Melbourne. He moved in with his girlfriend at age 17.
By 1987, aged 16, Assange had become a skilled hacker under the name Mendax, taken from Horace's splendide mendax (from Latin, "nobly untruthful"). Around this time, the police raided his mother's home and confiscated his equipment. 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 December 1996, facing a theoretical sentence of 290 years in prison, he struck a plea deal and pleaded guilty to 24 hacking charges. The judge called the charges "quite serious" and initially thought a jail term would be necessary but ultimately sentenced Assange to a fine of A$2,100 and released him on a A$5,000 good behaviour bond because of his disrupted childhood and the absence of malicious or mercenary intent. After his sentencing, Assange told the judge that he had "been misled by the prosecution in terms of the charges" and "a great misjustice has been done". The judge told Assange "you have pleaded guilty, the proceedings are over" and advised him to be quiet. Assange has described the trial as a formative period and according to The New Republic, "the experience set him on the intellectual path" leading him to found WikiLeaks. In 1993, Assange provided technical advice and support to help the Victoria Police Child Exploitation Unit to prosecute individuals responsible for publishing and distributing child pornography. His lawyers said he was pleased to assist, emphasising that he received no benefit for this and was not an informer. His role in helping the police was discussed during his 1996 sentencing on computer hacking charges. According to his mother, Assange also helped police "remove a book on the Internet about how to build a bomb".
According to Assange, in the 1990s, he and Suburbia Public Access Network facilitated leaks for activists and lawyers. Assange told Suelette Dreyfus that he had "acted as a conduit for leaked documents" when fighting local corruption. While awaiting trial and trying to get custody of his son, Assange and his mother formed the activist organisation Parent Inquiry Into Child Protection. An article in the Canadian magazine Maclean's later referred to it as "a low-tech rehearsal for WikiLeaks". The group used the Australian Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents, and secretly recorded meetings with Health and Community Services. The group also used flyers to encourage insiders to anonymously come forward, and according to Assange they "had moles who were inside dissidents." An insider leaked a key internal departmental manual about the rules for custody disputes to the group.
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| Husband | Teresa Assange (m. 1989-1999) Stella Assange (m. 2022) |
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Net Worth and Salary
Estimates of Julian Assange's net worth vary significantly, ranging from $300,000 to $1.3 million. The higher estimate includes earnings from his autobiography and book deals. His financial situation has been affected by legal challenges and his prolonged detention.
In 1998 he co-founded with Trax the "network intrusion detection technologies" company Earthmen Technology which developed Linux kernel hacking tools. During this period he also earned a sizeable income working as a consultant for large corporations. In October 1998, Assange decided to visit friends and announced on the cypherpunks mailing list he would be "hopscotching" through Russia, Mongolia, China, Poland and Eastern Europe.
In December 2006, the month WikiLeaks posted its first leak, Assange published a five-page essay that outlined the "thought experiment" behind the WikiLeaks strategy: use leaks to force organisations to reduce levels of abuse and dishonesty or pay "secrecy tax" to be secret but inefficient. Assange explained: "The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in the leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive 'secrecy tax') and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaptation."
Early Career
Assange began his career as a computer hacker and later became involved in security and journalism. In 1991, he pleaded guilty to 25 counts of hacking in Australia, receiving a fine.
In 2022, the incoming Australian Labor government of Anthony Albanese reversed the position of previous governments and began to lobby for Assange's release. In 2024, following a High Court ruling that granted Assange a full appeal to extradition, Assange and his lawyers negotiated a deal with US prosecutors. Assange agreed to a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defence documents in return for a sentence of time served. Following the hearing Assange flew to Australia, arriving on 26 June.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) set up an investigation called Operation Weather targeting The International Subversives. In September 1991, Assange was discovered hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel, a Canadian multinational telecommunications corporation. Another member of the International Subversives turned himself and the others in, and the AFP tapped Assange's phone line (he was using a modem) and raided his home at the end of October.
Assange and a group of other dissidents, mathematicians and activists established WikiLeaks in 2006. Assange became a member of its advisory board. From 2007 to 2010, Assange travelled continuously on WikiLeaks business, visiting Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America.
Assange found key supporters at the Chaos Computer Club conference in Berlin in December 2007, including Daniel Domscheit-Berg and Jacob Appelbaum and the Swedish hosting company PRQ.
Social Network
While Assange's personal social media presence is limited, WikiLeaks maintains a strong online presence, using platforms to disseminate information and update supporters on its activities.
In the same year, he took over running one of the first public Internet service providers in Australia, Suburbia Public Access Network, when its original owner, Mark Dorset, moved to Sydney. He joined the cypherpunk mailing list in late 1993 or early 1994. According to Robert Manne, Assange's main political focus at this time seems to have been the information-sharing possibilities created by the internet and its threats. He began programming in 1994, authoring or co-authoring network and encryption programs, such as the Rubberhose deniable encryption system. Assange wrote other programs to make the Internet more accessible and developed cyber warfare systems like the Strobe port scanner which could look for weaknesses in hundreds of thousands of computers at any one time.
WikiLeaks' international profile increased in 2008 when a Swiss bank, Bank Julius Baer, tried via a Californian court injunction to prevent the site's publication of bank records. Assange commented that financial institutions ordinarily "operate outside the rule of law", and he received extensive legal support from free-speech and civil rights groups. Bank Julius Baer's attempt to prevent the publication via injunction backfired. As a result of the Streisand effect, the publicity drew global attention to WikiLeaks and the bank documents.
Education
Assange holds no formal degree, but his technical skills were largely self-taught. He gained experience through his early hacking activities and later developed his skills in journalism and security.
Overall, Julian Assange's career has been marked by both significant achievements in journalism and activism and ongoing legal battles that have impacted his personal and financial life.
Assange studied programming, mathematics, and physics at Central Queensland University (1994) and the University of Melbourne (2003–2006), but did not complete a degree. Assange started the Puzzle Hunt tradition at the University of Melbourne, which was modelled after the MIT Mystery Hunt. He was involved in the Melbourne rave scene, and assisted in installing an internet kiosk at Ollie Olsen's club night called "Psychic Harmony", which was held at Dream nightclub in Carlton (later called Illusion). Assange's nickname at the raves was "Prof".
Assange wrote a program called Sycophant that allowed the International Subversives to conduct "massive attacks on the US military". The International Subversives regularly hacked into systems belonging to a "who's who of the U.S. military-industrial complex" and the network of Australia National University. Assange later said he had been "a famous teenage hacker in Australia, and I've been reading generals' emails since I was 17". Assange has attributed his motivation to this experience with power.
