On Tuesday, March 7, WikiLeaks published a new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Code-named “Vault 7” by WikiLeaks, the data dump is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the spy agency.
The CIA documents and hacking tools were part of a series of hacks under President Barack Obama’s watch.
Part one of the series “Year Zero”, is comprised of 8,761 documents and files from inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.
The dump also includes the CIA’s entire arsenal of hacking tools, including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware remote control systems, and more.
Among the CIA’s targets are iPhones, Android phones and smart TVs. The latter, smart TVs, can be remotely controlled by the CIA to monitor a consumer’s viewing habits and even remotely control a smart TV camera to view inside the consumer’s home.
For instance, the “Weeping Angel”, developed by the CIA, draws comparison to George Orwell’s 1984. The malware infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones.
The Weeping Angel “fake off” malware targeted Samsung smart TVs by fooling the consumer into thinking the TV was off when it was actually on.
The hacked data available on WikiLeaks shows that as of October 2014 the CIA was developing malware to infect the vehicle control systems (in-dash computer) used by modern cars and trucks.
The tools developed by the CIA’s Mobile Development Branch permitted the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, etc, by hacking the smart phones they run on before the encryption is applied.
CIA malware also targeted home computer operating systems such as Windows, MAC OS X, Linux, routers, etc.
