Vault 7

WikiLeaks began releasing a series of documents in March 2017, shedding light on the extensive cyber capabilities of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The leak, considered one of the most significant in terms of scale and impact, exposed a range of cyber tools and techniques used by the CIA for surveillance, espionage, and cyber-espionage activities.

The documents in Vault 7 detailed a wide array of cyber weapons and hacking tools that the CIA allegedly developed and employed to compromise various electronic devices. Among the revelations were tools targeting popular consumer electronics such as smartphones, smart TVs, and computer operating systems. The leaks highlighted the CIA’s focus on exploiting vulnerabilities in software and hardware to conduct covert intelligence gathering and cyber operations.

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.

One of the prominent tools disclosed in Vault 7 was “Marble Framework“. Marble was described as a set of obfuscation techniques used to disguise the source code of malware, making it more challenging for forensic analysts to attribute cyber operations to a specific actor or nation-state. By applying these techniques, the CIA could potentially make it appear as though a cyber attack originated from a different source, diverting attention and complicating the attribution process. They could, for instance, stage a large-scale cyber-terrorist attack; a cyber-pandemic if you will, and then make it look like Iran, North Korea, Russia or China was responsible. Not that they ever would.

“Weeping Angel” was another – a program designed to turn Samsung smart TVs into covert listening devices, even when they appeared to be turned off.

Vault 7 provided insights into the CIA’s capabilities for compromising various platforms and highlighted the agency’s focus on exploiting vulnerabilities rather than disclosing them to the respective companies. The leak sparked debates about the balance between national security interests and the potential risks to individual privacy. The exposure of such tools prompted calls for increased transparency and accountability in government surveillance practices, as well as discussions about the ethics and legality of certain cyber operations.

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