Slashdot Mirror


WikiLeaks Reveals CIA's Secret Hacking Tools and Spy Operations (betanews.com)

Mark Wilson, writing for BetaNews: WikiLeaks has unleashed a treasure trove of data to the internet, exposing information about the CIA's arsenal of hacking tools. Code-named Vault 7, the first data is due to be released in serialized form, starting off with "Year Zero" as part one. A cache of over 8,500 documents and files has been made available via BitTorrent in an encrypted archive. The plan had been to release the password at 9:00am ET today, but when a scheduled online press conference and stream came "under attack" prior to this, the password was released early. Included in the "extraordinary" release are details of the zero day weapons used by the CIA to exploit iPhones, Android phones, Windows, and even Samsung TVs to listen in on people. Routers, Linux, macOS -- nothing is safe. WikiLeaks explains how the "CIA's hacking division" -- or the Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI) as it is officially known -- has produced thousands of weaponized pieces of malware, Trojans, viruses and other tools. It's a leak that's essentially Snowden 2.0. In a statement, WikiLeaks said CIA has tools to bypass the encryption mechanisms imposed by popular instant messenger apps Signal, Confide, WhatsApp (used by more than a billion people), and Telegram.

6 of 447 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Interesting timing re Trump's claims by gnick · · Score: 4, Informative

    As far as I'm aware, nobody has denied that Trumps (not the US president at the time) phones were tapped as part of an investigation into his shady links with Russia.

    James Clapper did.
    FTA:

    The director of national intelligence at the time of the US election has denied there was any wire-tapping of Donald Trump or his campaign.
    James Clapper also told NBC that he knew of no court order to allow monitoring of Trump Tower in New York.

    --
    He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  2. Re:NYT reported it by MatthiasF · · Score: 4, Informative

    Your reading comprehension skills are terrible. Very first sentence of the article:

    "The NY Times reported that wiretaps of people on the Trump team"

    TRUMP TEAM. No where in either article mentioned does it say that Trump himself or Trump Tower was wire tapped. It's like you people don't even read...at all. I mean, it's EVEN IN THE HEADLINE TOO.

    Another AC spewing pro-Trump, pro-Putin lies. FSB running in over-drive.

  3. Re:NYT reported it by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Informative

    People keep pointing to this piece of an NY Times story and inserting claims that were not made. It's been known for fucking months that US security services were keeping a damned close eye on Russian communications. If the likes of Sessions and Flynn were so fucking stupid and incautious as to be just chatting up the Russian Ambassador on behalf of their boss, well they deserve what they get. The takeaway here is that Trump and his proxies are fucking morons, regardless of whether they were actually doing anything wrong or not. In politics, the perception of scandal can be as bad as an actual scandal.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  4. Re:Intel CPU backdoors by networkBoy · · Score: 4, Informative

    LOL, I don't know why you idiots kept saying it's for "Corporate" chip only when the thing is in all chips marketed under different "features"

    As I had noted, the min Sku is required, but doesn't contain the "bad stuff"TM, it only has CPU uCode patch and Power config profiles, it shuts down the system for several reasons, the most notable is that Intel doesn't want unpatched uCode CPUs out there. The other notable reason is so that they could tell a particular customer (NDA'd) that they *had* to have it to boot, so why not just use the whole thing? That was a total marketing ploy, but ended up being nice for engineering, because we only had to support *one* FW kernel that way. There is a TON of overhead supporting multiple FW kernels, making it only one allowed us to move many people onto more useful projects, rather than parallel teams doing the same basic thing.

    Show me the source code of the so called "FPT.exe" "FPTw.exe", what it actually does, do you have a before and after ROM comparison?

    I'd love to, *but* I'd have to violate an NDA I signed when I left

    Stop parroting Intel sales and look at the problem.

    Hahahahahaha, I'm not parroting sales. I'm speaking from my having spent 6 years working on that project, from Version 3.2 through Version 11, at which point I left the company.

    --
    whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
  5. Re:Obamacare repeal finally imminent. by losfromla · · Score: 3, Informative

    Don't we already have that in place? Don't families already have to stage car-washes and Fund-me campaigns to help pay for medical care?

    --
    Only I can judge you.
  6. Re: Your CPU is running a backdoor right now by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yep it's called PSP instead of IME.