ANALYSIS WikiLeaks appears to have gone missing, with what has become more or less a regular release from its Vault 7 CIA document dump not being made on 26 May.
Every weekend since 14 April, the organisation has released a set of documents detailing some CIA tools that are used against networks for the purpose of gathering information or hacking.
But the weekend after Sweden dropped its probe into alleged rape claims against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, there has been no release of any CIA material.
When the first lot of CIA files were dumped on 7 March, they were claimed to be part of the biggest lot of secrets from the intelligence agency, totally 8761 documents and files in all.
{loadposition sam08}The last drop included documents from the CIA's Athena project, providing remote beacon and loader capabilities on target computers running Windows (from XP to W10).
Former NSA employee Jake Williams was one person who noticed the lack of a document release, tweeting, "Probably the most significant thing to come out of @wikileaks Vault7 dumps recently is that there wasn't a dump yesterday. What gives?"
Probably the most significant thing to come out of @wikileaks Vault7 dumps recently is that there wasn't a dump yesterday. What gives?
— Jake Williams (@MalwareJake) 27 May 2017
Following Sweden's announcement, attention has focused on what would happen to Assange now, with the Ecuador government saying it would push for his asylum, and for him to be granted free passage to Quito.
But more attention has been focused on what the US would do now, to carry out its threat to get Assange over to the country to face trial for releasing what it claims is classified material.
Assange has been taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, after the British government sought to extradite him to Sweden to face questioning over the allege rape investigation. No charges were ever filed against him.
The question arises; is WikiLeaks keeping quiet now for the noise around Assange to die down before it releases any more material?
Is it reasoning that continuing to release Vault 7 documents would be akin to waving a red flag in front of a charging bull?
Or is it just a coincidence that on 26 May there was nothing to see on the WikiLeaks site for those who have become accustomed to seeing a set of documents from Vault 7?