In the latest set of documents called ‘Vault 7’ released by Wikileaks, it has been revealed that America’s CIA (Central Investigation Agency) can snoop on you through your iOS, Android and Microsoft devices. Not just that, they can also use your Samsung smart TV to record living room chatter, even when it’s switched off! Apparently, the agency uses a program called ‘Weeping Angel’, which can take over Samsung Smart Tvs and make them appear switched off, while the idiot box passes on your personal life to the agency.
Where we’d like to think that encrypted chat apps have made it impossible for anyone to gain access to our conversations, think again. The CIA has developed more than 1000 malware programs which can infiltrate personal devices and take over the OS, bypassing native security features of apps. The CIA’s Mobile Devices Branch (MDB) developed numerous attacks to remotely hack and control popular smartphones. Infected phones can be instructed to send the CIA the user’s geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone’s camera and microphone. As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.
The Wikileak document states, “By the end of 2016, the CIA’s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence(CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other “weaponized” malware. Such is the scale of the CIA’s undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its “own NSA” with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified.”
CIA malware and hacking tools are built by EDG (Engineering Development Group), a software development group within CCI (Center for Cyber Intelligence), a department belonging to the CIA’s DDI (Directorate for Digital Innovation). The EDG is responsible for the development, testing and operational support of all backdoors, exploits, malicious payloads, trojans, viruses and any other kind of malware used by the CIA in its covert operations world-wide. The document further states that in addition to its operations in Langley, Virginia the CIA also uses the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt as a covert base for its hackers covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
For reading the entire document, click here
