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Items tagged with CIA
WikiLeaks has published secret documents belonging to the United States government that reveal the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been building and maintaining cyber tools designed to compromise wireless routers. These tools are the work of the CIA's hacking unit called Engineering Development Group. Among them is a specialized firmware referred to as Cherry Blossom. "The wireless device itself is compromized by implanting a customized Cherry Blossom firmware on it; some devices allow upgrading their firmware over a wireless link, so no physical access to the device is necessary for a successful...
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WikiLeaks has posted its latest release from the Vault 7 series of CIA-related leaks that exposes a tool dubbed “Athena”, which acts as a beacon on compromised Windows-based systems and gives the agency remote loader capabilities as well.Athena and its associated tools function on all versions of Windows from XP through Windows 10. There is a secondary implementation named “Hera” for Windows 8 and newer systems, due to some underlying changes Microsoft made to the OSes, which offers all of the same capabilities. All told, Athena / Hera provides a beaconing capability with remote configuration and...
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WikiLeaks isn’t done exposing the CIA’s arsenal of hacking tools used to infiltrate computer systems around the globe. Last month, we told you about Weeping Angel, which targeted select Samsung Smart TVs for surveillance purposes. Today, we’re learning about Archimedes, which attacks computers attached to a Local Area Network (LAN). Although we have no way of knowing whether Archimedes is still in use by the CIA, the details of how it is unleashed on unsuspecting parties has been revealed in full. In its teaser announcing the exploit, WikiLeaks writes, “It allows the re-directing of traffic from...
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Back in early March, WikiLeaks gave the world an early glimpse into just a small sample of the hacking arsenal at the disposal of the CIA. As part of WikiLeaks’ “Vault 7” dump, we were made privy to software hacks that targeted Android- and iOS-based smartphones, Windows- and OS X-based PCs and even Samsung smart TVs. Today, WikiLeaks released the CIA’s actual user guide for “Weeping Angel”, the exploit use to hack Samsung smart TVs. We’ve also learned that Weeping Angel is actually based on another piece of malware, “Extending”, that was developed by the British MI5 spy agency. Weeping Angel (and...
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The latest bombshell to come out of WikiLeaks’ Vault7 series of leaks from the CIA, exposes a tool codenamed “Grasshopper”, which allows operatives to deploy persistent surveillance and hacking payloads on target Windows-based computer systems and remain undetected from popular anti-malware and anti-virus tools.WikiLeaks has an array of documentation on-line, including an in-depth user’s guide for Grasshopper. The user’s guide explains that Grasshopper is “a software tool used to build custom installers for target computers running Microsoft Windows operating systems”, which seems straightforward...
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Are you worried about the CIA cyber-espionage toolkit that was just revealed on Tuesday? Well, Julian Assange apparently has your back. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, recently promised that his organization would help companies like Apple, Google and Samsung to defend themselves against the hacking tools -- the very tools that the organization is set to unleash in full to the world. Assange remarked that "We have decided to work with them, to give them some exclusive access to some of the technical details we have, so that fixes can be pushed out." Many of the exploits are currently...
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Several technology firms have issued statements after Wikileaks published a massive cache of documents alleging that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had developed methods to hack popular electronics devices, including iPhones, Android handsets, and Samsung smart TVs. Dubbed "Vault 7," the data dump is considered the largest public reveal of confidential documents related to the CIA.If the documents are real, they contain detailed exploits on popular devices that would allow the CIA to snoop on users and even take control of gadgets. The documents, which are dated between 2013 and 2016, purportedly...
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It appears that WikiLeaks has struck the motherlode. The non-profit organization, which has gained notoriety over the years for publishing secretive and often classified information, has just revealed a massive information dump of files obtained from within the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). WikiLeaks has named this latest information release ‘Vault 7’ and it includes over 8,700 classified documents that were obtained from the CIA Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), which is located in Langley, Virginia. The first question that we asked ourselves when presented with this information was...
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It looks as though the National Security Agency (NSA) crown jewels are about to be fondled by the rest of America’s intelligence agencies. The NSA monitors and collects various types of communications including emails, phone calls, and even transmissions conducted by our foreign allies (and foes). As we learned from the the Edward Snowden leaks, this information is stored in bulk and is one of the reasons for the ever-increasing use of encryption in our smartphones (see Apple vs FBI). Historically, the data collected has mainly been kept within the halls of the NSA and only offered to other intelligence...
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It was revealed several months ago that the U.S. Marshal Service secretly uses spy planes equipped with devices that mimic cell towers to scan for and harvest cellphone information on a mass scale. Now it's being reported that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) played a key role in helping the Justice Department develop the technology that's capable of scanning data from thousands of cellphones at a time.Let's back up a moment. As originally reported by a number of news outlets, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was clueless of the spy program that the Department of Justice (DoJ) won't...
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Thanks to the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, we know that the United States government has in place a sophisticated and all-encompassing spying program, and as time goes on, additional details leak out that underscore how little privacy we truly have. Whether it's intercepting Skype communications or tampering with hard drives, the concept of privacy is fast becoming an illusion. So, would it really be surprising to find out that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been working for years to exploit Apple's iPhone and iPad devices?It's true, according to The Intercept, which claims...
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An accountability board overseen by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) cleared the spy agency of any wrongdoing after investigating the search of Senate computers that were used to review the agency's alleged use of torture tactics during Bush's presidency period. That might be fine and dandy under different circumstance, but in this case, the review panel looking into the CIA's actions was put together by… the CIA. Conflict of interest, anyone? The board released a 38-page report in which it found that a handful of agency officials made a "mistake" by searching for files used by the Senate...
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Even when the government conducts secret activities, those ventures have to be funded, and a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives last night took a swipe at the NSA’s domestic spying practices by cutting some of its funding. According to Ars Technica, Representatives James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and Thomas Massie (R-KY) authored an amendment to a defense appropriations bill that “none of the funds made available by this Act may be used by an officer or employee of the United States to query a collection of foreign intelligence information acquired under section...
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A new comprehensive writeup at The Intercept claims to reveal additional details of the NSA's plans to infiltrate and conquer the Internet -- as well as its desire to bring virtually all data, everywhere, within its reach. A year ago, this kind of claim would've sounded like hyperbolic conspiracy theory, but no longer. Whether the NSA could ever effectively analyze that information is very much an open question, but the organization has launched a huge number of programs to pursue these ends. Own The Web What The Intercept report details is the NSA's plan for infiltrating target networks, right...
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