WikiLeaks made headlines during the presidential campaign with its document dump of emails from Hillary Clinton and others.
Now, the cyberhacking group’s in the news again, following a dump of 8,761 documents which it claims show “the entire hacking capacity of the CIA,” reported the Independent. The dump is reported to be more extensive than that of Edward Snowden‘s 2013 leaks of the NSA and PRISM.
Titled “Vault 7,” the document file reveals CIA hacking tools and illustrates that the agency “lost control of its arsenal,” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claimed in a statement.
The Independent wrote that the person behind the leak made the information public out of concern for the agency’s potential overreach of authority:
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.
According to KCPQ, the areas of concern included the agency’s hacking of consumer devices:
“…how to compromise smart televisions and turn them into improvised surveillance devices. WikiLeaks said the data also include details on the agency’s efforts to subvert American software products and smartphones, including Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft Windows.”
WikiLeaks’ #Vault7 reveals CIA ‘zero day’ attacks against iPhones, iPads (iOS) https://t.co/UEWWAWWV6K pic.twitter.com/GmpMcmGLPC
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 7, 2017
Mashable reported that one document from 2014 showed how the CIA looked into “infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks.”
Snowden weighed in about the information dump on Twitter, writing that the documents showed the U.S. government was working against software safety:
If you’re writing about the CIA/@Wikileaks story, here’s the big deal: first public evidence USG secretly paying to keep US software unsafe. pic.twitter.com/kYi0NC2mOp
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) March 7, 2017
WikiLeaks also tweeted something in a similar vein:
#Vault 7 shows that Apple has been proven right. Governments can’t be trusted to keep “for the government only” security holes safe,
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 7, 2017
But software safety is not the only issue being raised. The document dump is being tied back to the presidential campaign in several ways, including the Russia controversy:
CIA uses techniques to make cyber attacks look like they originated from enemy state. It turns DNC/Russia hack allegation by CIA into a JOKE
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) March 7, 2017
Obama accused Russia of cyberattacks while his CIA turned all internet enabled consumer electronics in Russia into listening devices. Wow!
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) March 7, 2017
And things took an ominous turn, with one tweet pointing to a reporter’s death in 2013:
Wikileaks hints CIA may have had a role in the death of Michael Hastings https://t.co/Iu0aY57zCG pic.twitter.com/QC9gXLwWhD
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 7, 2017
KCPQ wrote that WikiLeaks has a long track record of releasing actual government documents, and unnamed experts are saying the current batch appears to be authentic.