Federal criminal probe to open into WikiLeaks CIA document dump

According to a newly released documents by Wikileaks, the Central Intelligence Agency has the power to hack smartphones and infect and extract data, including the user’s location, audio and text messages, and even activate a phone’s came and microphone.

“Apple is deeply committed to safeguarding our customers’ privacy and security”. A Google spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

WikiLeaks claims that the new leak, code-named “Vault 7,” is the largest ever publication of confidential CIA documents, with 8,761 files released from the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Virginia. WikiLeaks said the now available trove of 8,761 documents is just the first part (dubbed “Year Zero”) of a series of documents; the rest will be released sometime in the future.

WikiLeaks says it obtained the CIA files after the agency “lost control” of the documents after they began circulating among a 5,000-person network of former US government hackers and contractors, one of whom WikiLeaks claims is the one who leaked the documents. WikiLeaks said it planned to avoid distributing tools “until a consensus emerges” on the political nature of the CIA’s program and how such software could be analyzed, disarmed and published.

The files contain numerous exploits for both iOS and Android devices, dating from between 2014 and 2016.

In conjunction with Britain’s MI5, the agency developed a cyberweapon known as “Weeping Angel” that can take control of Samsung smart TVs, Wikileaks said.

It could also bypass encryption methods used by popular chat programs such as Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal and Confide and had undocumented exploits on popular smartphones.

The attack against Samsung TVs was developed in cooperation with the United Kingdom intelligence agencies MI5 and BTSS, turning the device into a listening bug that uses its internet connection to record and transmit information to a CIA server, WikiLeaks said in a statement.

Other CIA hacks detailed in today’s WikiLeaks disclosures include malware attacks to Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.

It was not immediately clear whether the leak – which, if verified, would represent the most massive USA intelligence breach since Edward Snowden exposed the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping programs in 2013 – had taken officials at the CIA by surprise. Officials accused Russian intelligence agencies of using the information to help Donald Trump, the Republican candidate.