WikiLeaks Expose How CIA Hacks Phones, Computers & Other Gadgets

WikiLeaks released on Tuesday “Vault 7” which is made up of over 8,700 documents and files of CIA’s archives. The documents published by the organization that leaked highly secure government data in the past expose the hacking tools used by the CIA to break into computers, phones and other gadgets. WikiLeaks says the CIA lost control of the archive which is now in the hands of ex-U.S. government contractors and hackers in an unauthorized way.

Reading Encrypted Messages

One of the hackers and former contractors gave to WikiLeaks parts of the CIA archive, according to the CBS News report. The tools which CIA use could read encrypted messages sent to WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal which are supposed to be secure apps. Although the CIA did not deny or confirm that the documents held by WikiLeaks are authentic, CNET notes that the agency’s role is to spy on people outside the U.S.

In a news release, WikiLeaks says the archive has more than several hundred million lines of codes that give the one who holds the documents the CIA’s entire hacking capacity. Mark Rasch, who used to be a computer crimes prosecutor at the Justice Department, compares the loss of the archive to government anthrax hidden in a lab but is released and becomes a source of danger to the entire nation, NBC reports. “The real story here is the government cannot secure these tools,” he says.

How To Hack Targeted Computer

According to the New York Times, the CIA documents now partly in the hands of WikiLeaks include instructions how to compromise a variety of common computer tools to spy on Skype, Wi-Fi networks, documents in PDF formats and commercial antivirus programs used by the public to protect their PCs and laptops. Wrecking Crew, for instance, is a program that teaches how to hack a targeted computer and filch passwords with the use of autocomplete function on Internet Explorer.

WikiLeaks claims the CIA and allied intelligence services have compromised Apple and Android smartphones by bypassing encryption on popular services. They could even penetrate smartphones and collect message traffic and audio before encryption is applied.