(Screencap: Twitter)

An anonymous hacker going by the Twitter handle @TylerSec has published a post on PasteBin claiming to have released 33 GB of JSTOR documents via his own leak network, Tyler Leaks. If the documents are in PDF format and are around 50-75 pages each, that's about 22,500 academic papers dumped. The leak comes in response to the death of hacker hero Aaron Swartz who was facing a federal sentence for "stealing" academic papers from JSTOR.

Gawker writer Adrian Chen notes that the leak could be of the same documents released by Wikimedia contributor Greg Maxwell in 2011. "There's a good chance that this Anonymous leak of JSTOR documents is an old dump from last year," he tweeted.

In the Pastebin post, TylerSec claims to have released the "First leak from the Anonymous Tyler Network: 33 GB of the JSTOR files that Aaron Swartz died to bring to the world." He included a link to his Tumblr where users can download software used to access the documents, as well as a link to the documents themselves.

"The people you are after are the people that society depends on: we write songs, we create art, we build, we invent, we feel love and laugh, we will defend our freedom to our last breath," reads the Pastebin post. "Do not fuck with us."

Anonymous has been vocal in avenging Mr. Swartz's death, recently launching an operation called #OpAngel in his memory.