‘Entire Hacking Capacity Of CIA’ Dumped On Wikileaks, Site Claims

Recently, the whistleblower website WikiLeaks publicly leaked 8,761 documents purportedly containing highly confidential information on the CIA global hacking capabilities and malware arsenal. The data dump was the largest-ever leak of confidential CIA information. The revealed files and documents were code-named Vault7 and came from an isolated, high-security network inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence facility in Langley. The documents contained a voluminous library of cyber attack techniques collected from malware produced by other countries and several hundred million lines of attack code and a collection of hacker tools developed over the year for breaking into and spying on adversary systems and networks, and masking the origin of attacks and confusing forensic investigations. WikiLeaks also stated that the documents were circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive. The leaked documents described numerous zero-day vulnerabilities targeting Android, iOS, and Windows systems, as well as exploits against network routers, smart TVs, and critical components in connected vehicles. This data dump created a concern on the ability of CIA to protect their confidential data against such massive leaks, and concern about WikiLeaks’ motives for such a leak and responsibility for potential misuse of the leaked data by criminal attackers. FBI has opened a federal criminal investigation into the WikiLeaks disclosure on Wednesday.

Link: http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/entire-hacking-capacity-of-cia-dumped-on-wikileaks-site-claims/d/d-id/1328339