WikiLeaks offers to help tech firms defeat Central Intelligence Agency hacking

While the affected tech companies have a responsibility to fix issues in their products to protect consumer privacy, there is a huge risk of facing legal and ethical questions by accepting assistance from WikiLeaks.

While the exact source of the information is unknown, Wikileaks attributes the leak to someone in the Snowden tradition of being interested in forcing a public debate on an out of control government spying program. Assange said that some companies had asked for more details about the cyber-espionage toolkit when it leaked earlier this week.

“We have chose to work with them”, Assange said during an online press conference on Thursday.

“Once this material is effectively disarmed we will publish additional details about what has been occuring”. “It is ready to enhance dialogue and cooperation with the global community to formulate a set of worldwide rules on cyberspace acceptable to all parties”, he added. The other three companies did not respond to messages seeking comment. WikiLeaks said in its press release that although it is in possession of the code behind the hacking tools and malware described in the documents, it has decided not to release the malicious code itself.

The cache of documents published by WikiLeaks has not been authenticated by independent experts.

It was not clear how WikiLeaks meant to cooperate with the companies.

But some GOP fiscal hawks have said it should not be raised – among them are members who believe, with nothing but evidence to the contrary, that a debt-ceiling breach would have zero effect on the USA economy.

On Thursday, vendors including Microsoft, along with the security firms Avira and Comodo, said that WikiLeaks hasn’t contacted them yet.

Wikileaks has been a thorn in the side of Western governments for years, and it reached new levels of publicity with the publication of hacked emails from the US Democratic Party in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Spicer was referring to US President Donald Trump’s address to Congress last week+.

“WikiLeaks has a lot more information on what has been going on with the cyber weapons programme”, he said.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

The documents include instructions for using hacking tools, tips on configuration of Microsoft Visual Studio (classified as Secret/NOFORN), and testing notes for various hacking tools. Some might have unadvertised features that could, for instance, start extracting data as soon as they launch. “It’s exactly the opposite of what they (the USA government) should be doing”. “‘Hey if i download this, insert it into a phone, then I can listen in on anyone in my business or in my house for criminal intent, that could be a bad thing”, said Wurzbacher.

There’s one more unknown, which is just how much help WikiLeaks can actually provide.

As a matter of fact Google, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, Cisco, Linux and many more were reported to be infected by the Central Intelligence Agency, in those documents released by WikiLeaks.

But will software companies want it?