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The anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks said Tuesday that it has obtained a vast portion of the CIA's computer hacking arsenal, and began posting the files online in a breach that may expose some of the U.S. intelligence community's most closely guarded cyber weapons.
A statement from WikiLeaks indicated that it planned to post nearly 9,000 files describing code developed in secret by the CIA to steal data from targets overseas and turn ordinary devices including cellphones, computers and even television sets into surveillance tools.
The hacking organisation made the statement as it announced a huge release of confidential documents from the CIA as part of its mysterious Year Zero series, founder Julian Assange claimed. The group said that from October 2014 the CIA was "looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks" to enable them to "engage in nearly undetectable assassinations."
takyon: WikiLeaks: Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed and (selected document) Weeping Angel (Extending) Engineering Notes. Also at NYT, USA Today, BBC, and Reuters. The Hill reports that Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu has called for an investigation... into the leak of the documents and tools.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday March 08 2017, @08:47AM
Ok, have had a few hours to poke around in the archive. Am I the only one who is unimpressed with the quality of the CIA's capabilities? Ok, I know this was mostly a downlow reinvention of NSA's stuff to use places the NSA wouldn't but now I wonder just whether their vaunted tools are any better. Is all government employee quality? Is it kept so secret to keep the script kiddies from laughing?
The better bits are clearly stolen (often with attribution) from better people in the underworld and they can't seem to manage a tool that evades all of the common scanners. Yes the tools to attack phones seem a little more effective but then phones are where desktops were in the early 1990s with almost no protection. And the trend is already turning, they are having real problems with current iOS and Android.
And the hack on a Samsung smart TV that is getting so much media attention is nowhere near ready to deploy into the field. They are having problems with the most basic things like frobbing GPIO lines to suppress the leds. Top. Men.