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  1. #1
    Super Moderator GeorgiaPeach's Avatar
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    Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools (WikiLeaks)

    Press Release


    Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named "Vault 7" by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.

    The first full part of the series, "Year Zero", comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.

    Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized "zero day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.

    "Year Zero" introduces the scope and direction of the CIA's global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of "zero day" weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.

    Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force — its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency's hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA's hacking capacities.

    By the end of 2016, the CIA's hacking division, which formally falls under the agency's Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other "weaponized" malware. Such is the scale of the CIA's undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its "own NSA" with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified.


    In a statement to WikiLeaks the source details policy questions that they say urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA's hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency. The source wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.


    Once a single cyber 'weapon' is 'loose' it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by rival states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.

    Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor stated that "There is an extreme proliferation risk in the development of cyber 'weapons'. Comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled proliferation of such 'weapons', which results from the inability to contain them combined with their high market value, and the global arms trade. But the significance of "Year Zero" goes well beyond the choice between cyberwar and cyberpeace. The disclosure is also exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective."

    Wikileaks has carefully reviewed the "Year Zero" disclosure and published substantive CIA documentation while avoiding the distribution of 'armed' cyberweapons until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the CIA's program and how such 'weapons' should analyzed, disarmed and published.


    Wikileaks has also decided to redact and anonymise some identifying information in "Year Zero" for in depth analysis. These redactions include ten of thousands of CIA targets and attack machines throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States. While we are aware of the imperfect results of any approach chosen, we remain committed to our publishing model and note that the quantity of published pages in "Vault 7" part one (“Year Zero”) already eclipses the total number of pages published over the first three years of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks.


    https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/
    Last edited by GeorgiaPeach; 03-07-2017 at 10:49 AM.
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  2. #2
    Super Moderator GeorgiaPeach's Avatar
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    Analysis


    CIA malware targets iPhone, Android, smart TVs



    CIA malware and hacking tools are built by EDG (Engineering Development Group), a software development group within CCI (Center for Cyber Intelligence), a department belonging to the CIA's DDI (Directorate for Digital Innovation). The DDI is one of the five major directorates of the CIA (see this organizational chart of the CIA for more details).


    The EDG is responsible for the development, testing and operational support of all backdoors, exploits, malicious payloads, trojans, viruses and any other kind of malware used by the CIA in its covert operations world-wide.


    The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell's 1984, but "Weeping Angel", developed by the CIA's Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.


    The attack against Samsung smart TVs was developed in cooperation with the United Kingdom's MI5/BTSS. After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a 'Fake-Off' mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on. In 'Fake-Off' mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server.


    As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.


    The CIA's Mobile Devices Branch (MDB) developed numerous attacks to remotely hack and control popular smart phones. Infected phones can be instructed to send the CIA the user's geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone's camera and microphone.


    Despite iPhone's minority share (14.5%) of the global smart phone market in 2016, a specialized unit in the CIA's Mobile Development Branch produces malware to infest, control and exfiltrate data from iPhones and other Apple products running iOS, such as iPads. CIA's arsenal includes numerous local and remote "zero days" developed by CIA or obtained from GCHQ, NSA, FBI or purchased from cyber arms contractors such as Baitshop. The disproportionate focus on iOS may be explained by the popularity of the iPhone among social, political, diplomatic and business elites.


    A similar unit targets Google's Android which is used to run the majority of the world's smart phones (~85%) including Samsung, HTC and Sony. 1.15 billion Android powered phones were sold last year. "Year Zero" shows that as of 2016 the CIA had 24 "weaponized" Android "zero days" which it has developed itself and obtained from GCHQ, NSA and cyber arms contractors.


    These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the "smart" phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.


    https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/

    Last edited by GeorgiaPeach; 03-07-2017 at 11:51 AM.
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  3. #3
    Super Moderator GeorgiaPeach's Avatar
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    CIA malware targets Windows, OSx, Linux, routers


    The CIA also runs a very substantial effort to infect and control Microsoft Windows users with its malware. This includes multiple local and remote weaponized "zero days", air gap jumping viruses such as "Hammer Drill"which infects software distributed on CD/DVDs, infectors for removable media such as USBs, systems to hide data in images or in covert disk areas ("Brutal Kangaroo") and to keep its malware infestations going.


    Many of these infection efforts are pulled together by the CIA's Automated Implant Branch (AIB), which has developed several attack systems for automated infestation and control of CIA malware, such as "Assassin" and "Medusa".


    Attacks against Internet infrastructure and webservers are developed by the CIA's Network Devices Branch (NDB).


    The CIA has developed automated multi-platform malware attack and control systems covering Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux and more, such as EDB's "HIVE" and the related "Cutthroat" and "Swindle" tools, which aredescribed in the examples section below.



    CIA 'hoarded' vulnerabilities ("zero days")

    In the wake of Edward Snowden's leaks about the NSA, the U.S. technology industry secured a commitment from the Obama administration that the executive would disclose on an ongoing basis — rather than hoard — serious vulnerabilities, exploits, bugs or "zero days" to Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other US-based manufacturers.


    Serious vulnerabilities not disclosed to the manufacturers places huge swathes of the population and critical infrastructure at risk to foreign intelligence or cyber criminals who independently discover or hear rumors of the vulnerability. If the CIA can discover such vulnerabilities so can others.


    The U.S. government's commitment to the Vulnerabilities Equities Processcame after significant lobbying by US technology companies, who risk losing their share of the global market over real and perceived hidden vulnerabilities. The government stated that it would disclose all pervasive vulnerabilities discovered after 2010 on an ongoing basis.


    "Year Zero" documents show that the CIA breached the Obama administration's commitments. Many of the vulnerabilities used in the CIA's cyber arsenal are pervasive and some may already have been found by rival intelligence agencies or cyber criminals.


    As an example, specific CIA malware revealed in "Year Zero" is able to penetrate, infest and control both the Android phone and iPhone software that runs or has run presidential Twitter accounts. The CIA attacks this software by using undisclosed security vulnerabilities ("zero days") possessed by the CIA but if the CIA can hack these phones then so can everyone else who has obtained or discovered the vulnerability. As long as the CIA keeps these vulnerabilities concealed from Apple and Google (who make the phones) they will not be fixed, and the phones will remain hackable.


    The same vulnerabilities exist for the population at large, including the U.S. Cabinet, Congress, top CEOs, system administrators, security officers and engineers. By hiding these security flaws from manufacturers like Apple and Google the CIA ensures that it can hack everyone &mdsh; at the expense of leaving everyone hackable.

    (More at link)

    https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/
    Matthew 19:26
    But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
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  4. #4
    Super Moderator GeorgiaPeach's Avatar
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    WikiLeaks Claims CIA Lost Control of ‘Hacking Arsenal’


    Lucas Nolan


    March 7, 2017


    In a press release for their most recent data dump, whistleblowing service WikiLeaks claims that the CIA has lost control of their “hacking arsenal.”

    The press release states that WikiLeaks’ publication of CIA documents is the “largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.” The data dump consists of 8,761 files and documents taken from a high-security isolated network situated inside the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.




    Explosively, WikiLeaks also claims that the CIA has lost control of their “hacking arsenal.”




    Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.




    WikiLeaks states that their data dump contains information outlining the CIA’s global hacking program, the large collection of malware utilized by the agency, and their “zero day” weaponized exploits which could be used to hack “Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.”




    Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force — its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency’s hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA’s hacking capacities.



    By the end of 2016, the CIA’s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other “weaponized” malware. Such is the scale of the CIA’s undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its “own NSA” with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified.




    The press release notes the vulnerability of these “cyber weapons” and how easily they can be hijacked by third parties:




    Once a single cyber ‘weapon’ is ‘loose’ it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by rival states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.




    WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange gave his own comment on the release, stating:



    There is an extreme proliferation risk in the development of cyber ‘weapons’. Comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled proliferation of such ‘weapons’, which results from the inability to contain them combined with their high market value, and the global arms trade. But the significance of “Year Zero” goes well beyond the choice between cyberwar and cyberpeace. The disclosure is also exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective.



    Read the full press release here.
    https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/



    http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/0...cking-arsenal/
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  5. #5
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    WikiLeaks Releases CIA Data Dump, Claims Press Conference Livestream ‘Under Attack’

    AP Photo/Markus Schreiber

    by Lucas Nolan7 Mar 2017


    WikiLeaks has released a CIA data dump titled “Vault 7 Part 1 “Year Zero”: Inside the CIA’s global hacking force.”


    WikiLeaks sent out multiple tweets today in relation to a new batch of information set to be published following a press conference at 8AM ET. The release was given the codename “Year Zero” and related to what WikiLeaks called a “CIA global hacking force.”
    At 8AM WikiLeaks claimed that their live streaming services were “under attack” and that they were “activating contingency.”
    A few minutes later, WikiLeaks tweeted the decryption passphrase for the CIA data dump which reads, “SplinterItIntoAThousandPiecesAndScatterItIntoTheW inds”,
    WikiLeaks has since announced that Julian Assange’s press conference relating to the data dump will be rescheduled for a later time,
    Breitbart will be reporting on the leaks as events unfold.
    http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/0...ault-7-part-1/

  6. #6
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    By the end of 2016, the CIA's hacking division, which formally falls under the agency's Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other "weaponized" malware. Such is the scale of the CIA's undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its "own NSA" with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified.
    There would be no problem at all for the CIA to disguise itself as a "Russian hacker" to hack into the DNC emails to then leak them to Wikileaks and blame Trump somehow for it, would it? That wouldn't be a problem at all for the CIA, would it? Why no, that would be easy peasy for the CIA to do that. Then they leak "we have intelligence that Russia is interfering with our Democracy", then set up Trump for "collusion with the Kremlin in interfering with our democracy". I mean stuff like this child's pay for the US CIA, on the record, off the record, by actual employees or former employees.
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  7. #7
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Trump really needs to give Phil Snowden a pardon, bring him home, and use him to help figure all this stuff out, right the wrongs, and of course keep the good that the CIA does. Snowden is one who knows the difference from a technical standpoint and isn't afraid to speak up about it. I really want that dear young man to be able to come home.
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    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    WikiLeaks outs CIA for turning smartphones, TVs into spy cameras and audio bugs
    By S.A. Miller - The Washington Times - Updated: 12:25 p.m. on Tuesday, March 7, 2017

    WikiLeaks published thousands of purported CIA documents Tuesday that claim to show intimate details of the agency’s cyberespionage effort, including malware that turns iPhones, Android cell phones and Samsung smart TVs into bugs and spy cams.

    The release comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia, according to WikiLeaks.

    The documents include information about a CIA cyber intelligence outpost in the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt, Germany, that gave the cyber spies access throughout the European Union.

    The documents could not immediately be authenticated. But a cybersecurity expert, Rendition Infosec founder Jake Williams, told The Associated Press that the dump appeared legitimate.

    The documents detail some of the roughly 500 projects from the CIA’s Engineering Development Group (EDG), the majority of which consists of tools used for penetration, infestation or implanting, control and exfiltration from computer systems.

    The CIA’s “Weeping Angel” spyware attack on Samsung smart TVs, which was developed in cooperation with the United Kingdom’s MI5, places target TVs in a “Fake-Off” mode and then operates the TV as a listening device. The recorded conversations are then transmitted over the Internet to a covert CIA server, according to the documents.

    The data also revealed a CIA project in 2014 that attempted to infect vehicle-control systems used by modern cars and truck. The purpose of the cyberattack was not specified, but it would potentially give the CIA control over operation of vehicles.

    WikiLeaks speculated the agency could use the hack to “engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.”

    WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange said the document dump, which he dubbed “Year Zero,” revealed the extent of U.S. cyberespionage and the risk proliferation this unchecked technology posed to the world.

    “There is an extreme proliferation risk in the development of cyber ‘weapons.’ Comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled proliferation of such ‘weapons,’ which results from the inability to contain them combined with their high market value, and the global arms trade,” he said in a statement. “But the significance of “Year Zero” goes well beyond the choice between cyberwar and cyberpeace. The disclosure is also exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective.”

    WikiLeaks said that it carefully reviewed the “Year Zero” disclosure and published substantive CIA documentation while avoiding the distribution of “armed” cyberweapons, awaiting a consensus on the technical and political nature of the CIA’s program and how such “weapons” should be analyzed, disarmed and published.

    WikiLeaks also redacted and rendered anonymous some identifying information in “Year Zero” documents. The redactions include ten of thousands of CIA targets and attack machines throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States, according to WikiLeaks.

    The “Year Zero” dump eclipsed the total number of pages published over the first three years of information from NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/7/wikileaks-publish-thousands-what-it-says-are-cia-d/




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  9. #9
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    U.S. spies scrambling to assess WikiLeaks dump

    By Guy Taylor - The Washington Times - Tuesday, March 7, 2017

    U.S. intelligence officials scrambled Tuesday to assess the scope and potential validity of a mountain of documents that the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks has begun publishing online with a claim that the trove consists of thousands of files from the CIA’s most secretive computer hacking operations.

    “We are taking steps to figure out what this means,” one U.S. official told The Washington Times, hours after WikiLeaks announced the purported leak, saying it exposes a CIA program that can turn iPhones, Android cellphones and other commercial technology into clandestine mics and spy cams.

    “These things take time,” said the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, given the potential sensitivity of the purported leak. “This announcement just came this morning.”

    It was not immediately clear whether the leak — which, if verified, would represent the most massive U.S. intelligence breach since Edward Snowden exposed the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping programs in 2013 — had taken officials at the CIA by surprise.

    Jonathan Liu, a spokesman in the agency’s office of public affairs, issued the following statement to reporters Tuesday morning: “We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents.”

    WikiLeaks said in a press release that it had begun publishing an initial batch of some 8,761 documents and files containing computer hacking codes developed by an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence, at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

    The anti-secrecy organization said the materials had been provided by a U.S. government contractor, but provided few other details.

    “The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive,” the organization said.

    The archive, it claimed, shows the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of “weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, [including] Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.”

    The documents could not immediately be authenticated.

    But cybersecurity expert Jake Williams, the founder of Rendition Infosec, a private Augusta, Georgia-based company, told The Associated Press that the dump appears legitimate.

    “There’s no question that there’s a fire drill going on right now,” Mr. Williams said. “It wouldn’t surprise me that there are people changing careers — and ending careers — as we speak.”

    S.A. Miller contributed to this story.
    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...ikileaks-dump/







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  10. #10
    Super Moderator GeorgiaPeach's Avatar
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    Let us remember when FBI Director James Comey learned about spying through cameras on devices he starting putting tape over the camera lens on his computer.
    Matthew 19:26
    But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
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