A series of extremely cryptic tweets from Wikileaks' co-founder Julian Assange raised concerns that he had been killed over the weekend.
The three messages, posted on Sunday evening, contained the word 'pre-commitment' and mentioned John Kerry, Ecuador, and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Those aspects alone were rather odd, but the truly compelling part of the tweets was that each one contained a 64-character code.
Many, in turn, theorized that the codes were a 'dead man's switch' designed to unleash a horde of documents kept by Wikipedia and only to be released in the event of Assange's death.
As such, speculation ran rampant that the controversial figure had met his demise, leading to a myriad of theories as to who pulled the proverbial trigger.
One particularly fantastic scenario proposed by some concerned conspiracy theorists is that actress Pamela Anderson poisoned Assange when she delivered vegan sandwiches to him over the weekend.
However, subsequent research by Gizmodo indicated that the enigmatic codes in the tweets were part of a cryptographic system designed to ensure that released documents can be verified as pristine.
Additionally, a Wikileaks volunteer with access to Assange tweeted this morning that the site's co-founder is alive and well.
Nevertheless, there appears to be something strange happening with Assange and Wikileaks as it has since been claimed that his Internet access has been "severed by a state party" and that group is working on contingency plans at the moment.
With Wikileaks playing a considerable role in the presidential election, much to the chagrin of some power brokers, these latest developments suggest that there may be some kind of battle playing out behind the scenes in cyberspace to silence the powerful site and its co-founder.
Coast Insiders looking to learn more about the 'hacktivism' field can check out former hacker Gregg Housh's 7/29/2016 appearance on the program.
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Source: Gizmodo