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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Julian Assange has offered tech companies exclusive access [reuters.com] to CIA hacking tools so that they can patch flaws in their software. However, some of the companies claim to have already patched the exploits:

WikiLeaks will provide technology companies with exclusive access to CIA hacking tools that it possesses, to allow them to patch software flaws, founder Julian Assange said on Thursday. The offer, if legitimate, could put Silicon Valley in the unusual position of deciding whether to cooperate with Assange, a man believed by some U.S. officials and lawmakers to be an untrustworthy pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin, or a secretive U.S. spy agency.

It was not clear how WikiLeaks intended to cooperate with technology companies, or if they would accept his offer. The anti-secrecy group published documents on Tuesday describing secret Central Intelligence Agency hacking tools and snippets of computer code. It did not publish the full programs that would be needed to actually conduct cyber exploits against phones, computers and Internet-connected televisions. [...] Several companies have already said they are confident that their recent security updates have already accounted for the purported flaws described in the CIA documents. Apple said in a statement on Tuesday that "many of the issues" leaked had already been patched in the latest version of its operating system.

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