CIA Hacking Tools Allow for an Unaccountable Intelligence Agency Dictatorship

By now, most of you have heard about the largest ever release of confidential CIA documents published by Wikileaks, known as Vault7. Many of you have also read various summaries of what was released, but reading the take of others is not the same as analyzing it yourself. As such, I strongly suggest you check out the original Wikileaks summary. It’s mostly written for the layperson without much technical expertise (like myself), and I think you’ll get a lot out of it.

In this post, I’m going to republish the entire press release, as well as provide key excerpts from the larger summary along with some personal observations. Let’s get started…

From Wikileaks:

Press Release

Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named “Vault 7” by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.

The first full part of the series, “Year Zero”, comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.

Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.

Lovely. Just lovely.

“Year Zero” introduces the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of “zero day” weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.

Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force — its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency’s hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA’s hacking capacities.

This leak might very well be from a competing government agency concerned about the unaccountable power and sloppiness of the CIA, or it could simply be a turf war. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we have the information, and the more the people know about these out of control, undemocratic agencies, the better.

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.

In a statement to WikiLeaks the source details policy questions that they say urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency. The source wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.

Once a single cyber ‘weapon’ is ‘loose’ it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by rival states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor stated that “There is an extreme proliferation risk in the development of cyber ‘weapons’. Comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled proliferation of such ‘weapons’, which results from the inability to contain them combined with their high market value, and the global arms trade. But the significance of “Year Zero” goes well beyond the choice between cyberwar and cyberpeace. The disclosure is also exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective.”

Wikileaks has carefully reviewed the “Year Zero” disclosure and published substantive CIA documentation while avoiding the distribution of ‘armed’ cyberweapons until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the CIA’s program and how such ‘weapons’ should analyzed, disarmed and published. 

Wikileaks has also decided to redact and anonymise some identifying information in “Year Zero” for in depth analysis. These redactions include ten of thousands of CIA targets and attack machines throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States. While we are aware of the imperfect results of any approach chosen, we remain committed to our publishing model and note that the quantity of published pages in “Vault 7” part one (“Year Zero”) already eclipses the total number of pages published over the first three years of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks.

Analysis

The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell’s 1984, but “Weeping Angel”, developed by the CIA’s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.

Recall the 2015 post: A Very Slippery Slope – Yes, Your Samsung Smart TV Can Listen to Your Private Conversations

The attack against Samsung smart TVs was developed in cooperation with the United Kingdom’s MI5/BTSS. After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a ‘Fake-Off’ mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on. In ‘Fake-Off’ mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server.

As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.

Recall another 2015 post: Here’s What Happens When Hackers Shut Down a Jeep’s Engine Going 70mph on a Highway

The CIA’s Mobile Devices Branch (MDB) developed numerous attacks to remotely hack and control popular smart phones. 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.

Despite iPhone’s minority share (14.5%) of the global smart phone market in 2016, a specialized unit in the CIA’s Mobile Development Branch produces malware to infest, control and exfiltrate data from iPhones and other Apple products running iOS, such as iPads. CIA’s arsenal includes numerous local and remote “zero days” developed by CIA or obtained from GCHQ, NSA, FBI or purchased from cyber arms contractors such as Baitshop. The disproportionate focus on iOS may be explained by the popularity of the iPhone among social, political, diplomatic and business elites.

similar unit targets Google’s Android which is used to run the majority of the world’s smart phones (~85%) including Samsung, HTC and Sony. 1.15 billion Android powered phones were sold last year. “Year Zero” shows that as of 2016 the CIA had 24 “weaponized” Android “zero days” which it has developed itself and obtained from GCHQ, NSA and cyber arms contractors.

These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the “smart” phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.

The CIA also runs a very substantial effort to infect and control Microsoft Windows users with its malware. This includes multiple local and remote weaponized “zero days”, air gap jumping viruses such as “Hammer Drill” which infects software distributed on CD/DVDs, infectors for removable media such as USBs, systems to hide data in images or in covert disk areas ( “Brutal Kangaroo”) and to keep its malware infestations going.

In the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks about the NSA, the U.S. technology industry secured a commitment from the Obama administration that the executive would disclose on an ongoing basis — rather than hoard — serious vulnerabilities, exploits, bugs or “zero days” to Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other US-based manufacturers.

Serious vulnerabilities not disclosed to the manufacturers places huge swathes of the population and critical infrastructure at risk to foreign intelligence or cyber criminals who independently discover or hear rumors of the vulnerability. If the CIA can discover such vulnerabilities so can others.

This is key. Ostensibly, the justification for the CIA’s existence is to protect the public. In light of these revelations, it appears the agency does more harm than good by failing to alert major technology companies of major security flaws. Instead, it keeps these vulnerabilities alive to exploit them for whatever shadowy means they choose. Where is the oversight of such decisions?

The U.S. government’s commitment to the Vulnerabilities Equities Process came after significant lobbying by US technology companies, who risk losing their share of the global market over real and perceived hidden vulnerabilities. The government stated that it would disclose all pervasive vulnerabilities discovered after 2010 on an ongoing basis.

“Year Zero” documents show that the CIA breached the Obama administration’s commitments. Many of the vulnerabilities used in the CIA’s cyber arsenal are pervasive and some may already have been found by rival intelligence agencies or cyber criminals.

As an example, specific CIA malware revealed in “Year Zero” is able to penetrate, infest and control both the Android phone and iPhone software that runs or has run presidential Twitter accounts. The CIA attacks this software by using undisclosed security vulnerabilities (“zero days”) possessed by the CIA but if the CIA can hack these phones then so can everyone else who has obtained or discovered the vulnerability. As long as the CIA keeps these vulnerabilities concealed from Apple and Google (who make the phones) they will not be fixed, and the phones will remain hackable.

The same vulnerabilities exist for the population at large, including the U.S. Cabinet, Congress, top CEOs, system administrators, security officers and engineers. By hiding these security flaws from manufacturers like Apple and Google the CIA ensures that it can hack everyone &mdsh; at the expense of leaving everyone hackable.

The above highlights the most important takeaway from this whole document dump. Due to its capability to hack anyone on the planet, the CIA is in practice able to blackmail anyone they want, including our “representatives” in Congress, many of whom probably have a lot of skeletons in their closets they don’t want out. As such, these capabilities allow for the creation of an unelected intelligence complex dictatorship in the shadows. The American people will never be free until we deal with this issue once and for all.

Cyber ‘weapons’ are not possible to keep under effective control.Cyber ‘weapons’ are in fact just computer programs which can be pirated like any other. Since they are entirely comprised of information they can be copied quickly with no marginal cost.

Securing such ‘weapons’ is particularly difficult since the same people who develop and use them have the skills to exfiltrate copies without leaving traces — sometimes by using the very same ‘weapons’ against the organizations that contain them. There are substantial price incentives for government hackers and consultants to obtain copies since there is a global “vulnerability market” that will pay hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for copies of such ‘weapons’. Similarly, contractors and companies who obtain such ‘weapons’ sometimes use them for their own purposes, obtaining advantage over their competitors in selling ‘hacking’ services.

To attack its targets, the CIA usually requires that its implants communicate with their control programs over the internet. If CIA implants, Command & Control and Listening Post software were classified, then CIA officers could be prosecuted or dismissed for violating rules that prohibit placing classified information onto the Internet. Consequently the CIA has secretly made most of its cyber spying/war code unclassified. The U.S. government is not able to assert copyright either, due to restrictions in the U.S. Constitution. This means that cyber ‘arms’ manufactures and computer hackers can freely “pirate” these ‘weapons’ if they are obtained. The CIA has primarily had to rely on obfuscation to protect its malware secrets.

The CIA’s hand crafted hacking techniques pose a problem for the agency. Each technique it has created forms a “fingerprint” that can be used by forensic investigators to attribute multiple different attacks to the same entity.

This is analogous to finding the same distinctive knife wound on multiple separate murder victims. The unique wounding style creates suspicion that a single murderer is responsible. As soon one murder in the set is solved then the other murders also find likely attribution.

The CIA’s Remote Devices Branch‘s UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.

Think about the above the next time an anonymous intelligence official tells you they know it was the Russians who “hacked the election.”

With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the “fingerprints” of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.

Now here’s a rallying cry for journalists across the world to get to work.

Has WikiLeaks Already ‘Mined’ All the Best Stories?

No. WikiLeaks has intentionally not written up hundreds of impactful stories to encourage others to find them and so create expertise in the area for subsequent parts in the series. They’re there. Look. Those who demonstrate journalistic excellence may be considered for early access to future parts.

Won’t other journalists find all the best stories before me?

Unlikely. There are very considerably more stories than there are journalists or academics who are in a position to write them.

While I look forward to reading future stories uncovered by enterprising journalists, the above provides enough information for the American public be sufficiently alarmed to reign in this rogue agency and any other agencies that directly put the public at risk. If they’re harming us more than they’re helping us, why do they exist in the first place?

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In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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14 thoughts on “CIA Hacking Tools Allow for an Unaccountable Intelligence Agency Dictatorship”

  1. Chaos Theory

    Review of Douglas Valentine’s The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World

    by Joseph Balletti / February 8th, 2017

    The terrible truth is that a Cult of Death rules America and is hell-bent on world domination.

    — Douglas Valentine

    Douglas Valentine’s life’s work has been to expose and explain the CIA’s role in many key aspects of American society, and how they’re behind most of the atrocities, subversion and war since WWII, all over the world. I doubt that any other writer has given the details, or written with the force and courage that he has. He’s told us how America really functions, and what is behind much of its success in business, especially overseas. He’s described how the CIA infiltrates and is protected by the media and all the branches of the government, and how they can create chaos and control political messages, here and abroad. I’d like to talk a bit about how what I’ve learned from reading Douglas Valentine’s books can be seen day to day on the news and other media outlets. I’ll focus on the most current events that I think are very indicative of planned control and subversion. Valentine covers many other events in his new book, The CIA As Organized Crime, so I’ll add my thoughts.

    The word on the street is that the CIA does not operate in America’s interest; that is, doing things that would protect the majority of Americans and ensure that the country’s written standards and laws are upheld.

    Instead, it subverts nations for an oligarchy of super-rich financial and corporate interests that are essentially trans-national or global, whose allegiance is not national; their allegiance is to a captive government at the service of, and essentially indistinguishable from, financial institutions.

    The oligarchy is comprised of the super-rich of many nations whose money is handled by one dominant Western system and network. The goal is to enrich this group at any cost and since the cost to maintain the system is greater than the profits, making it essentially a Ponzi scheme, constant looting through warfare, debt service, taxes, stock market/real estate bubbles and bailouts, and organized crime must be maintained to generate cash.

    The majority of humanity is the intended victim of all of these massive crimes and the key is that they pay the costs, while the oligarchs take the profits. Anyone that works to further the interests of the oligarchy are given decent-paying jobs with lots of benefits and perks, pensions, and sometimes, included in schemes that bring in a lot of money. They’re also made to feel superior and part of some glorious purpose.

    http://dissidentvoice.org/2017/02/chaos-theory/

    Reply
    • Right on. My experience tell me the same thing that the taxpayer funded torture programs are hidden behind the excuse of the various doctrines, acts and policies. Thank the Lord for the ACLU as they are one of the few making any attempt to protect our rights.

    • i wonder what you consider to be your rights. i wonder why the left will not talk to the right. death cult, of course, just ask native americans. so if it’s nuclear winter, live undergrund. if it’s global warming, move to the arctic. if it’s economic collapse, learn to barter and plant potatoes. can anyone make shoes? how about compassion, not revenge. something to consider

  2. The CIA/bankers run everything, I’m convinced. It’s not surprising all our electronics record our every movement/call/electronic blip/conversations. We made it so easy to get spied on. They took full advantage. Get off the internet or have no privacy.

    Reply
  3. I live only a few miles from Langley, know several people who work there as career analysts and have been inside the building a few times. I don’t think the average America has any idea just how enormous it is. Thousands of people work at CIA headquarters alone–to say nothing of the many satellite facilities and stations around the world. And it is just one of a total 19 USG intelligence agencies.

    And what is the biggest complaint I hear from those that work there? An ungainly review process that makes even getting the most mundane bit of intelligence reporting approved a bureaucratic nightmare and leads to massive amounts of group think. Beyond just the CIA’s wanton abuses of power, American taxpayers pay an enormous amount of money to the agency and receive virtually no actual security benefit from it.

    Reply
    • Right again. My experience tells me the same thing that the taxpayer funded torture programs are hidden behind the excuse of the various doctrines, acts and policies. Thank the Lord for the ACLU as they are one of the few making any attempt to protect our rights.

  4. it did become quite obvious over the syrian disaster. and surely this global elite has conflicts among itself

    Reply
  5. I have been trying to think of strategies for confronting this massive illegal and immoral actions by a relatively small number of people against a very large number of people.

    Leaking their secrets is powerful but can be contained through use of propaganda. We see this happening today. Although these leaks had nothing to do with Russia, in fact they clearly showed how the CIA could make their own actions appear to be the work of the Russian govt., I noticed that when “lefty” outfits like the Guardian covered this at all they made it about Russia. The massive illegality and incredibly dangerous nature of an intelligence based police state was not really delved into. Many “lefty” outfits maintained radio silence (Democracy Now).

    It also occurred to me that this leak has exposed exactly how the IC is ruling us. Their rule is as dystopian as it goes. Yet Democrats long for the rule of the IC. They wish Trump to be deposed by the IC and have the IC institute open control over USGinc. This is a very bizarre desire, especially when one is able to see exactly how one is being ruled covertly by this group. Yet as of today, Democrats are still looking for their utopia of progressive society via IC rulership. To get so many people to this point in their minds, it took and will continue to take a massive propaganda campaign.

    Returning to Rich’s post which brings up many good points, one thing this deep state needs is a lot of money. Is there a way to deprive them of access to our money? They need a lot of mind slaves. Is there a way to get through their thought control? Is it possible to, for example, get a Democrat to realize that their utopia is actually a dangerous dystopia? Is there a way to get people on the right to stop calling the deep state “communism” and see that in fact it is crony capitalism, not a libertarian state of free market in any way shape or form?

    This won’t be easy.

    Reply
    • I like your comment on “Is there a way to get people on the right to stop calling the deep state “communism” and see that in fact it is crony capitalism, not a libertarian state of free market in any way shape or form?” Whatever the label the taxpayer funded torture programs need to be exposed and stopped. Thank the Lord for the ACLU as they are one of the few organizations working on this.

    • Ricardo,

      I certainly agree with you that US torture programs need to be outed with those who order torture and those who engage in it prosecuted.

      Although the ACLU is involved in exposing some of what is happening with the torture program (for which I am also grateful) you may want to look into other aspects of this organization which are less than admirable. They have been really partisan, supporting both Clinton and Obama even as they knew both people were/are war criminals who actively ordered torture. It’s a weird contradiction in their behavior as an organization.

  6. mike, you should do a post on the death of jfk JR. . it is recent enough that it is still relevant.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAe2PC3Gv_Y

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=284zz4Nl00g

    and even though there is often crap in this blog, i like this article on who is killing russian diplomats. its been in the alt news a lot lately but not enough in my opinion.
    http://themillenniumreport.com/2017/02/who-is-killing-all-the-russian-diplomats/

    why? as you posted kucinich saying, the deep state is trying to engineering a cold war. the bottom line is they are not killing enough diplomats and they will have to do something even more extreme eventually and probably sooner than later………….

    Reply
  7. you gotta love the irony though of the alleged russian hacks.

    either the cia is framing russia and stealing clinton’s emails in order to get leverage on her while making it look like trump stole them via russia OR the cia is so incompetent they helped leave the door wide open for the russians to steal clinton’s info making it easy for trump to win.

    either way the cia is incompetent because trump, their supposed nemesis won.

    that——or this ‘vault 7’ leak is just another deep cover cia op and snowden and others are a deep cover cia operation.

    i don’t think they are. the cia is 20,000 people big. i don’t care how big america is , if there’s 20,000 people in any organization you are going to have major problems. it’s just too big……….

    Reply

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