Obama’s CIA Hacked Phones And TVs And Turned Them Into Spy Devices

It claims this will represent the largest dump of confidential documents on the agency in history.

The CIA hadn’t yet confirmed or denied the information at the time of publication, but WikiLeaks does have a long track record of releasing top-secret government documents.

“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”, WikiLeaks said.

This isn’t NSA-style collection of information, when the hugely powerful government spy agency was discovered to be gathering information on practically everyone with a digital trail.

The organization said the first part comprised 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.

But in the hours since the documents were made available, a common misconception of the leak is that the security of encrypted messaging apps, many of which have grown in popularity during the past six months, has been compromised.

Most of the CIA’s programs exploited “zero day” vulnerabilities, or undisclosed weaknesses in software that can used by hackers to affect or gain access to data or programs.

The exploit to listen in through Samsung TVs has been dubbed Weeping Angel and was developed with Britain’s MI5/BTSS, WikiLeaks said. In December, the CIA said it had concluded that Russian intelligence operatives provided materials to Wikileaks in an effort to help President Donald Trump’s defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

But others aren’t so sure the document dump really shows that the Central Intelligence Agency has been stockpiling information about vulnerabilities. They did so only after they had full control of these phones. Google and Apple were unable to provide a comment on the revelations when contacted by Newsweek. As a general user, there is not much to worry about being targetted.

Much the of the leak confirms what most people assume about the U.S. government’s ability to circumvent the built-in security features of computer software and mobile devices – for example, that the organization has many “zero day” exploits for computers running Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and more.

The last time something similar happened was when NSA contractor Edward Snowden had revealed that the agency was secretly collecting call metadata from United States citizens.

“When we look at the tools, they really give off the impression that they are used locally”, Graham said.

The CIA also apparently studied the possibility of breaching the control systems of vehicles, which WikiLeaks claims can be used to carry out assassinations that are nearly undetectable.