Wikileaks has announced that it has released its biggest load of files yet, all pertaining to the Syrian government.
In a press conference today at the Frontline Club in London, a spokesperson for Wikileaks revealed that over 2.4 million documents have been put online and that it has created a new database search system to cope with all the data.
The majority of documents are emails sent within the Syrian government from August 6 2011 to March 12 of this year and, although Wikileaks hasn't managed to verify all of the emails, it said that: "We are statistically confident that the vast majority of emails are what purport to be."
Assange:
"It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it."
E-fail
In total there are 2,434,899 files which have been made available for download on the Wikileaks site and these are said to come from "680 domains".
This is a leak that's eight times bigger than the famous Cablegate scandal back in 2011, which saw thousands of US government conversations leaked on the site.
The spokesperson for Wikileaks said about the data dump: "The material is embarrassing to Syria – it helps us to understand their interests, actions and thoughts."
Although Julian Assange wasn't at the event, he did say about the leak: "It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it."
According to Wikileaks, there are 678,752 different email addresses that have sent emails and 1,082,447 different recipients.
The data is more than eight times the size of 'Cablegate' in terms of number of documents, and more than 100 times the size in terms of data – so expect many revelations to come out of the leak, once it has been combed for information.
Interestingly, Wikileaks notes: "A significant part of the Syria Files were infected with viruses and Trojans".
In total it seems that 42,000 emails were infected.
