"I actually had six armed men break into my compound after sending someone in the previous day to disarm the electric fence," he said. "They had a fight with my guards, everyone woke up, then they ran away. I don't think it was a threat on my life, I think they just wanted to intimidate me a little bit."

A journalist by training, Assange seemed to treat the invasion as a badge of honor, a sign that Wikileaks is getting the attention it wants. It's easy to believe that he and the rest of the Wikileaks team enjoy wrestling in the mud. Most of them left paying jobs to join the site, which is a long way from paying for itself.

"The people involved, who are committed to it, spend their inheritance and that's how it's financed," he said. "There are some online donations but they only cover about 5 percent of expenses. We keep getting approached by people who want to contribute but they ask for a lot of bureaucracy in order to do that and right now we're a very lean organization. ... If grant writers would like to step forward, we'd be delighted."

The site's ability to function also depends on its wiki format, which allows people around the world to contribute to its upkeep and content. Always seeking new documents, Assange used his speech during the Hack In The Box conference in Malaysia to ask the crowd of hackers and security researchers to help find documents on its list.

"You have your game of capture the flag. There are a lot of flags; go capture them," he said. "Get it to us, no questions asked. You will help change history."