Items tagged with vault 7
Every so often, WikiLeaks publishes top-secret documents outlining various hacking tools and malware used by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Most of the documents we have seen are presumably outdated, but for obvious reasons, the CIA would still like to keep them under lock and key. The agency would also like to arrest the person responsible for providing the documents to Wikileaks, and has identified a possible suspect. That person is Joshua Adam Schulte, a former employee of a CIA group tasked with programming code to spy on foreign threats, The Washington Post reports. Federal prosecutors identified Schulte as a suspect during a hearing in January, noting that he provided...
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The latest documents from Vault 7, a collection of confidential materials related to hacking tools used by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and obtained by WikiLeaks, was made public today by the whistle blowing organization. This newest leak details the CIA's Angelfire project, which is a persistent framework that can load and execute custom malware on computers running Windows XP and Windows 7.Angelfire consists of five components, including Solartime, Wolfcreek, Keystone (previously MagicWand), BadMFS,a nd the Windows Transitory File system. Each of these parts has a distinct job. It starts with Solartime, which modifies the partition boot sector so that when Windows fires up...
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Another hacking tool used by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been revealed by WikiLeaks, the non-profit organization that often publishes secret documents obtained by anonymous sources. The latest set of documents comes from Wikileaks' Vault 7 collection of CIA malware tools and describes a utility for access webcams and microphones on certain Windows systems. Called Dumbo, the tool was not developed for spying on targets but to corrupt recordings from webcams and microphones where the deployment a special group within the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence could be compromised. It essentially allows an agent to cover his or her tracks. One of the documents related to...
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For the past several months, WikiLeaks has been publishing information related to exploits and hacking tools that had been used by the United States government at some point. The project is known as Vault 7 and seems to contain mostly older exploits, though it is not clear if some of the malware has been updated for modern platforms. Not all of it is aimed at Windows. In fact, the latest documents reference macOS and Linux hacks that were part of the US Central Intelligence Agency's Imperial program.Image Source: Flickr (Tony Webster)The first of these is called Achilles. According to the documentation, it is a capability that gives an operator the ability to infect a target's OS X disk image...
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WikiLeaks has published another set of leaked documents from the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This latest leak is part of WikiLeaks' Vault 7 batch and details a malicious app for Android devices called HighRise. Also called TideCheck, this app allows a remote hacker to redirect or intercept SMS text messages that are sent to a target's cellular phone, and have those communications forwarded to a remote web server.This appears to be an old tool that was used by the CIA, or at least the version described in the leaked documents is an older piece of malware. The accompanying manual is dated December 16, 2013, and describes a tool that was designed to work on mobile handsets running...
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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 the target computer inside the LAN through a computer infected with this malware and controlled by...
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WikiLeaks dropped a huge bombshell over two weeks ago when it revealed that it gained access to a treasure trove of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA’s) hacking tools. Documents detailed numerous tools at the agency’s disposal including viruses, trojans, zero-day exploits and other avenues to monitor or infiltrate devices ranging from iPhones to Smart TVs to computers running Windows or Mac operating systems. In the case of Apple devices, the CIA has its own dedicated team within the Mobile Device Branch (MDB) that specializes in exploiting iOS-based devices like the iPhone and the iPad. “The disproportionate focus on iOS may be explained by the popularity of the iPhone among social,...
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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 under wraps so that they do not get into the wrong hands. Smaller exploits could take a few days...
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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 simply “How?” Well, you can blame unscrupulous government contractors and hackers that have made...
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