By
Ekow Mensah
Last
week, Wikileaks unfurled as many as 8,000 pages of secrets of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States of America.
These
disclosures have shocked the world to the marrow especially at a time when the
Trump administration is engaged in a battle of nerves with intelligence
officials who blame Russia for hacking into the emails of top US politicians.
As
things turn out, the United States of America appears to be on top of the
league when it comes to hacking into systems for the achievement of political
ends.
The
revelation show that even the smart TV in your sitting room can be turned into
your enemy by the CIA. It can be made to record your conversations and
generally spy on you.
The
CIA can also take over the electronics in your car and use it to assassinate
you in a manner which cannot be traced to it.
As
for hacking emails, it is small potatoes for the CIA which has overthrown
several governments in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
In
the case of Ghana, the CIA sponsored the overthrow of the Nkrumah Government on
February 24, 1966 by its local agents in the Armed Forces and the Police and
the United Party (UP).
Documents
from the British High Commission in Accra show clearly that Nkrumah was
overthrown largely because he was making the African too politically conscious.
The
documents released by Wikileaks show that the CIA has been investigating ways
to hack and manipulate the control systems of cars and trucks for use in covert
operation.
According
to Wikileaks, the CIA’s interest in hacking vehicles is not specified, but
could be used in sinister ways, including assassinations.
Many
modern cars and trucks are heavily electronic and use computer systems to
control their brakes, windows, doors and acceleration.
The
Insight is publishing some of the leaked documents and analysis in this special
issue for the benefit of our readers.
WikiLeaks, “Year Zero” and the CIA Hacking
Files
By Dr. Binoy
Kampmark
It is now up to the
device and OS manufacturers, like Apple, Google, or Samsung, to fix their
volcanoes back into mountains. -Telegram Statement, Mar 8, 2017
The paradox with
information releases that expose a supposedly grand internal stratagem is that
they merely provide the food of confirmation otherwise lacking. Such food
is potent. It blows the lid off the suggestion that a conspiracy theorist
was merely a Cassandra in the wilderness chewing fingernails in fear that
something hideous was afoot. It provides nutrients for those seeking greater
scrutiny over the way state security, otherwise deemed the domain of closeted
experts, is policed.
The entire profession
(for it has now become one) of mass disclosures of secret or classified
documentation has reached a point where its normality can hardly be
questioned. Be it the juicy revelations of Edward Snowden in 2013, the
work of WikiLeaks in this decade and the last, and the Panama Papers,
whistleblowing, still punished and frowned upon, remains indispensable to the
conversation about transparency and the inner operations of the Dark State and
its accessories.
That Dark State was
given a further lighting up on Tuesday with the release, by WikiLeaks, of its
CIA Vault 7 and Year Zero series that has caused the usual flutter in the
intelligence community and governments.
These comprise the
machinery of hacking and cyber war tactics, an overview of methods that
suggest, according to WikiLeaks, a loss of control by the agency over a good
deal of its hacking arsenal (“malware, viruses, Trojans, weaponized ‘zero day’
exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation”).[1]
The releases reveal
aspects of the internal functions of the organisation, including the works of
its Engineering Development Group (EDG), dedicated to the development of
software within the Center for Cyber Intelligence.
 |
| Barack Obama exposed! |
As WikiLeaks revealed,
the sophisticated nature of surveillance is now such as to draw comparisons
with George Orwell’s 1984 “but ‘Weeping Angel’, developed by the Embedded
Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert
microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.”[2]Samsung has figured
prominently in such attacks jointly conducted with Britain’s MI5/BTSS.
Even of more concern is
that such methods, similar to the hoovering techniques of trawler surveillance,
tend to hamper, rather than sharpen, discrimination regarding targets of value.
Malware, in making its way into a range of devices (iPhones, Android, smart
TVs), lingers like an innocuous, odourless smell.
This makes suggestions of
‘targeted’ surveillance, or surveillance against countries other than those of
the Five Eyes, absurd. (Vide the opinions of Australia’s insipid
Christopher Pyne, who assumes with school boy innocence
that Washington would never have an interest in spying on Australian
subjects.)
Controls over the nature
of who receives or uses such devices or operating systems are less relevant
than the nature of the devices, adjusted and cooked to the right level of
surveillance. So called “smart” devices are hardly discerning in that regard.
The releases have also
seen a rapid scramble on the part of app companies to claim that the Vault and
Zero Year coverage by WikiLeaks reveals a crude reality: you simply cannot rely
on the security of your messaging format.
“To put ‘Year Zero’ into
familiar terms,” the statement from Telegram instructs with confidence piercing
clarity, “imagine a castle on a mountainside. That castle is a secure
messaging app. The device and its OS are the mountain. Your castle can be
strong, but if the mountain below is an active volcano, there’s little your
engineers can do.”[3]
The statement by Telegram
goes on to charmingly remind users that it would not matter “which messenger
you use. No app can stop your keyboard from knowing what keys you press.
The focus, then, is on “devices and operating systems like iOS and Android” not
on the level of apps. “For this reason,” the app company insists, “naming
any particular app in this context is misleading.”
 |
| Ex CIA Boss John Brennan |
What is not misleading is
the effect of such surveillance, the insecurity it inflicts on customers, and
the rampant breach of privacy. The intelligence agencies find themselves
running out of breath, bloated and spread. Their outsourcing of services
through less secure channels – namely contractors – has also unleased a demon
they can barely control.
Defenders of such methods
spring back into a default mode that assumes WikiLeaks has done something
terrible, emboldening enemies of the United States as defender of the
now poorly described “free world”. Pundits and former members of the
security coven fear that the disclosure of the CIA playbook on this is somehow
tantamount to giving away the family silver to a suicide bomber in search of
martyrdom. The pertinent question here, surely, is defending that
world from within as a matter of course.
Even the most dyed-in-the-wool
establishment type has to concede that the intelligence community, puffing and
out of breath, is there for the trimming, a vigorous pruning that just might
ensure its reinvigoration and relevance.
The CIA is a beast in
maturation, adjusting, and flexing its muscles in accordance with
circumstance. It is to be watched, accordingly cleaned and overseen by
diligent groundsmen and women. Sadly, the members of Congress are not
necessarily the most able, or willing, to do that watching. An external
impetus, miraculously supplied, might well do the trick.
Dr. Binoy
Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He
lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Notes
The original
source of this article is Global Research
WikiLeaks Warns CIA Trying to Hack Cars for ‘Undetectable
Assasinations’
In the explosive “Vault
7” CIA secrets published by WikiLeaks on Tuesday, the organization has warned
that the CIA, among a myriad of other intrusive exploits, has been
investigating ways to hack and manipulate the control systems of cars and
trucks for use in covert operations.
According
to WikiLeaks, the CIA’s interest in hacking vehicles is not
specified, but could be used in sinister ways, including
assassinations.
"As of October
2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems
used by modern cars and trucks," WikiLeaks said in a statement.
"The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would
permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations."
Many current vehicles are
now mainly controlled by computer systems — including brake control,
air bags, acceleration, steering, door locks, and other vital systems.
In 2014, hackers Charlie
Miller and Chris Valasek using their laptops while in the car, took
over a Jeep Grand Cherokee driven by a reporter for Wired,
as they were traveling on the highway. The demonstration was
shocking, and lead to the recall of 1.4 million vehicles. The
previous year, hackers compromised a Ford Escape and a Toyota Prius, while
sitting in the backseat.
The vehicle hacking
reports were contained in the first batch of CIA leaks, titled “Year
Zero.” Wikileaks published 8,761 documents and files which they claim are
from the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.
WikiLeaks has a
100-percent track record for publishing authentic documents.
NSA whistleblower Edward
Snowden has also chimed in on the issue, tweeting, “Still working
through the publication, but what @Wikileaks has here is genuinely a
big deal. Looks authentic.”
The WikiLeaks Revelations and the Crimes of US
Imperialism
By Andre Damon
With increasing frequency, aggressive foreign
policy moves by Washington have been palmed off by the media and political
establishment as defensive responses to “hacking” and “cyber-espionage” by US
imperialism’s geopolitical adversaries: Russia and China.
For months, news programs have been dominated
by hysterical allegations that Russia “hacked” the Democratic National
Committee in order to subvert the 2016 election. As the print and broadcast
media were engaged in feverish denunciations of Russia, the US and its NATO
allies moved thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks to the Russian border.
Not content to allege interference only in the
American election, the US media and its international surrogates have alleged
Russian meddling in elections in France, Germany and other far-flung countries.
Prior to the current furor over Russian “hacking” of the election, the Obama
administration used allegations of “hacking” and “intellectual property theft”
to justify the trade sanctions and military escalation against China that
accompanied its “pivot to Asia.”
Whenever the State Department, the CIA or
unnamed “intelligence officials” proclaim another alleged “cyber” provocation
by Washington’s geopolitical rivals, news anchors breathlessly regurgitate the
allegations as fact, accompanying them with potted infographics and footage of masked
men in darkened rooms aggressively typing away at computer keyboards.
But the official narrative of a benevolent and
well-intentioned US government coming under attack from hordes of Russian and
Chinese hackers, spies and “internet trolls” was upended Tuesday with the
publication by WikiLeaks of some 9,000 documents showing the methods used by
the Central Intelligence Agency to carry out criminal cyber-espionage,
exploitation, hacking and disinformation operations all over the world.
The documents reveal that the CIA possesses
the ability to exploit and control any internet-connected device, including
mobile phones and “smart” televisions. These tools, employed by an army of
5,000 CIA hackers, give the agency the means to spy on virtually anyone, whether
inside or outside the United States, including foreign governments, “friend”
and foe alike, as well as international organizations such as the United
Nations.
 |
| Ex US President George Bush |
The WikiLeaks documents expose the United
States as the world’s greatest “rogue state” and “cyber criminal.” The
monstrous US espionage network, paid for with hundreds of billions in tax
dollars, uses diplomatic posts to hide its activities from its “allies,” spies
on world leaders, organizes kidnappings and assassinations and aims to influence
or overturn elections all over the world.
On Tuesday, former CIA director Michael Hayden
replied to the revelations by boasting, “But there are people out there that
you want us to spy on. You want us to have the ability to actually turn on that
listening device inside the TV to learn that person’s intentions.”
One can only imagine the howls of indignation
such statements would evoke in the American press if they were uttered by a
former Russian spymaster. In his comments, Hayden barely attempts to cover up
the fact that the United States runs a spying and political disruption
operation the likes of which Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese
President Xi Jinping could only dream of.
 |
| US President Barack Obama |
The WikiLeaks documents show that the United
States seeks to cover up its illicit operations by planting false flags
indicating that its geopolitical adversaries, including Russia and China, bear
responsibility for its crimes.
Cybersecurity expert Robert Graham noted in a
blog post, for example, that
“one anti-virus researcher has
told me that a virus they once suspected came from the Russians or Chinese can
now be attributed to the CIA, as it matches the description perfectly to
something in the leak.”
The revelations have already begun to
reverberate around the world. German Foreign Ministry spokesman Sebastian
Fischer said Wednesday that Berlin was taking the revelations “very seriously,”
adding, “issues of this kind emerge again and again.” Meanwhile Germany’s chief
prosecutor has announced an investigation into the contents of the documents,
with a spokesperson telling Reuters,
“We will initiate an
investigation if we see evidence of concrete criminal acts or specific
perpetrators…We’re looking at it very carefully.”
The documents expose the CIA’s use of the US
consulate in Frankfurt, Germany as a base for its spying and cyber operations
throughout Europe, employing a network of intelligence personnel including CIA
agents, NSA spies, military secret service personnel and US Department of
Homeland Security employees. Many of these operatives were provided with cover
identities and diplomatic passports in order to hide their operations from the
German and European governments.
Wednesday’s rebuke by the German government
followed the revelations in 2013 by Edward Snowden that “unknown members of the
US intelligence services spied on the mobile phone of Chancellor Angela
Merkel,” as Germany’s top prosecutor put it in 2015.
The US media, true to its function as a
propaganda arm of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, immediately sprang
into action to minimize the significance of the revelations and to accuse
Russia, entirely without substantiation, of having released the documents in an
effort to subvert US interests.
 |
| Ex US President Bill Clinton |
NPR quoted favorably the statements of Hayden,
who declared, “I can tell you that these tools would not be used against an
American,” while the Washington Post quoted a bevy of
security experts who said there is nothing to worry about in the documents. It
favorably cited one such “expert,” Jan Dawson, who declared, “For the vast
majority of us, this does not apply to us at all … There’s no need to worry for
any normal law-abiding citizen.”
Such absurd statements, made about a security
apparatus that was proven by Snowden’s revelations to have spied on the private
communications of millions of Americans, and then lied about it to the public
and Congress, were taken as good coin by the US media.
Just one day after the WikiLeaks revelations,
the media spin machine was already busy portraying them as part of a Russian
conspiracy against the United States, and indicting WikiLeaks for acting as an
agent of foreign powers. “Could Russia have hacked the CIA?” asked NBC’s
evening news program on Wednesday, while another segment was titled “Could
there be a [Russian] mole inside the CIA?”
The types of spying and disruption mechanisms
revealed in the documents constitute a key instrument US foreign policy, which
works to subvert the democratic rights of people all over the planet in the
interest of US imperialism. No methods, whether spying, hacking, blackmail,
murder, torture, or, when need be, bombings and invasion, are off the table.
The original source of this article is World Socialist Website
Copyright © Andre Damon, World Socialist Website, 2017
Copyright © Andre Damon, World Socialist Website, 2017
CIA Hackers: Why WikiLeaks 'Vault 7' Becomes a Wake-Up Call For Users, IT Giants
The release of the
much discussed Vault 7 has become a wake-up call for computer users and IT
giants: this time WikiLeaks, an international non-profit organization that
publishes secret information from anonymous sources, has unveiled how the
mighty CIA has been hacking the entire world.
The files, leaked
by the non-profit organization, indicate that for years the CIA has
been methodically seeking and exploiting vulnerabilities
in globally-famous software and hardware platforms in order
to take control over them.
According to the
documents, the CIA hacking group possessed tools allowing them to infect a
target computer bypassing PSPs (Personal Security Product).
For instance, one of the files,
entitled "Kaspersky 'heapgrd' DLL Inject," describes Russian
cybersecurity provider Kaspersky Lab's PSPs vulnerabilities.
"The Kaspersky
AVP.EXE process references a DLL called WHEAPGRD.DLL. This DLL is supposed
to be located in one of the Kaspersky directories (which are
protected by the PSP). Due to a UNICODE/ASCII processing mistake, the
DLL name is prepended with the Windows installation drive letter, rather
than the full path to the DLL. For typical installations, this causes
Kaspersky to look for the DLL 'CWHEAPGRD.DLL' by following the
standard DLL search path order. Loading our own DLL into the AVP process
enables us to bypass Kaspersky's protections," the document reads,
adding that "this vulnerability is limited to some
of Kaspersky's previous releases."
The other document
presents a screenshot of a
"selected number of DLL misses from Kaspersky TDSS Killer
Portable."
Commenting on the
issue, Kaspersky Lab spokesperson Olga Bogolyubskaya told Sputnik that the
aforementioned DLL "heapgrd" vulnerability had been disclosed and
fixed back in 2009.
"Moreover, all new
company products are subject to mandatory testing for this and other
vulnerabilities before release," she stressed.
"The products
mentioned by WikiLeaks (KIS 7, KIS 8, WKSTNMP3) are obsolete versions
of Kaspersky Lab's security software; [the company] has not provided
technical support for these products for several years,"
Bogolyubskaya explained.
Indeed, the CIA report
published by WikiLeaks admits that Kaspersky Lab's more recent software
products KIS 9+ and WKSTN MP4 do not have this vulnerability.
"As for the DLL
inject vulnerability in the TDSSKiller utility, also mentioned in the
WikiLeaks report, it was closed in December 2015," she said.
"Kaspersky Lab
emphasizes that the documents published by WikiLeaks do not indicate that
the given vulnerabilities were applied in practice against the
solutions of Kaspersky Lab or other manufacturers of security
software, but [they] describe the software analysis by using a 'reverse
engineering' method," Bogolyubskaya elaborated.
Earlier Kaspersky Lab
said in an official statement that it is currently studying the latest reports released by WikiLeaks.
"Kaspersky Lab is
thoroughly studying the report published on WikiLeaks on March 7,
2017 in order to make sure that our clients are out of danger.
The company pays special attention to such reports and statements,"
the statement said, highlighting that the cybersecurity of Kaspersky Lab's
clients is the company's top priority.
For its part, American
cybersecurity provider Comodo Group, Inc., also mentioned in leaked CIA
reports, said that the vulnerability in Comodo 6 antivirus, described
by the CIA, was obsolete.
Likewise, Apple Inc.
called attention to the fact "many of the issues leaked today
were already patched in the latest iOS."
"While our initial
analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today were already
patched in the latest iOS, we will continue work to rapidly address
any identified vulnerabilities. We always urge customers to download the
latest iOS to make sure they have the most recent security updates,"
an Apple spokesperson said as quoted by Techcrunch.com.
While the world's leading
software and hardware developers rushed to announce that they have either
patched or are analyzing the vulnerabilities highlighted by WikiLeaks' CIA
exposure, Google Inc. was the last one to dispel the mounting doubts.
"As we've reviewed
the documents, we're confident that security updates and protections
in both Chrome and Android already shield users from many
of these alleged vulnerabilities. Our analysis is ongoing and we will
implement any further necessary protections. We've always made security a top
priority and we continue to invest in our defenses," Heather
Adkins, Google's Director of Information Security and Privacy, told Recode.net.
Does it mean that
computer users across the globe may now breathe a huge sigh
of relief?
Unlikely. The truth
of the matter is the disclosure covers the period between 2013 and
2016 and apparently presents just the tip of the iceberg.
"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," WikiLeaks press release says.
"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," WikiLeaks highlights.
WikiLeaks CIA Vault 7: 'We are looking at George Orwell’s
1984’
WikiLeaks revelations
about the CIA and its scope of activity show that this is not only a security
issue - it impacts businesses while the privacy we take for granted is at risk.
It is a very dangerous path for democracy to go down, experts told RT.
Whistleblowing website
WikiLeaks released on Tuesday a part of confidential documents on America's
Central Intelligence Agency. WikiLeaks said that this collection of leaked CIA
documents which revealed the extent of its hacking capabilities was “less
than one percent of its Vault 7 series”.
These documents also
includes revelations that the CIA is apparently able to disguise its own spying
as the work of other countries.
RT discussed the
revelations with former CIA officers, whistle-blowers and IT experts.
‘Modern aspect of cyber-war’
Dr. Binoy Kampmark,
Senior Lecturer from RMIT University in Melbourne, told RT
that “potentially, it is very significant, because what it does show,
should it actually come out to be the case, the demonstrable pattern of
engagement by the CIA in terms of its hacking techniques.”
“That is particularly
valuable and that is particularly illuminating. In time it may very well be
that his particular disclosure will reveal a very modern aspect of the cyber
war,” he continued.
“And this is what the
President of the US more or less said that the US has to arm for the next cyber
conflict, that essentially this is an age of a cyber-war. All of this
demonstrates the sheer seriousness and the importance of understanding these
capabilities but also, of course, the race as it were between various agencies
to identify the best means or the most effective means of actually hacking into
systems,” Kampmark said.
‘Spotlight into a dark area’
Larry Johnson, retired
CIA and State Department official said that “this material is significant
in that it shows just how robust and how organized the CIA effort is, at least
overseas, to be engaged with cyber activities.”
“Frankly, I think they
should be, but we also recognize that other major powers are also doing the
same thing, it provides a little bit, I guess, of spotlight into a dark area,
that is normally not accessible to the public,” he added.
‘Not just a security issue, impacts business’
Asked about whether it is
really Russian hackers that people should be worrying about, John Safa,
Pushfor Founder, told RT that his experience is that "there are
hackers all over the globe”.
In Safa’s
view, “this is quite damaging information in these documents. Especially
because some of this is validated by legitimate source code that is in there as
well. I don’t think it is just the Russians at all, there are very clever
security experts both in the UK here in London and also in the US.”
Safa told that his
biggest concern is with the messaging tools. "The part of these
documents have demonstrated that a lot of our popular tools, like WhatsApp and
Telegram have been hacked. And obviously this is starting to be reflected in
Europe. Deutsche Bank banned WhatsApp. They must have obviously know something
was going on.”
Safa said he
thinks “it is going to be repercussions in lots of different verticals and
in lots of different industries. Because obviously this impacts their
businesses. That is not just a security issue, but it also impacts business.
What information could get leaked out, if this information gets into wrong
hands? So, this has really serious ramifications.”
‘We are looking at “1984”
Annie Machon, former MI5
intelligence officer, recalled that “last year, there was the
biggest botnet attack ever, which took down the Internet across
Western America, then across Eastern America, and them across some of the
Western Europe.”
"And this botnet was
built on smart devices within people’s homes. Not their computers, not their
phones, but on things like smart fridges, smart computers, that sort of thing,
and smart televisions, as well. It is utterly feasible that all these devices
have already been hacked and they are used to spy on us.”
“We are looking at the
George Orwell “1984” novel where we have screens in our flats potentially
watching us. I remember back in the 1990s, the capability was there to implant
software onto primitive mobile phones, onto primitive computers, so that they
could indeed be switched on to record and film us and log our
keystrokes,” Machon said.
“However, back in those
days, there was a notion of oversight, and there was a notion of targeted
surveillance, which is what we need to prevent the bad guys doing bad things to
us. And it was also very labor-intensive. Because of the massive
expansion of the Internet and technology, now they can do it on the industrial
scale, which is what they seem to have developed. Which means that none of us
has any inherent sense of privacy, unless we take quite extreme actions to
protect our privacy even in our homes,” she added.
Machon warned the new
technological realities “is very dangerous for fully functioning
democracy. Because once you lose the sense that you have privacy to talk, to
write, to watch, to read, then suddenly you might start self-censoring yourself
in the sense that you inhibit what you do. So you can’t fully inform yourself,
be fully informed participatory citizen in a democracy. It is a very dangerous
path to go down.”
Mysterious Disk Wiper: WikiLeaks Reveals How CIA Weaponized 'Shamoon' Malware
 |
| Edward Snowden |
By Ekaterina Blinova
WikiLeaks' exposure of
CIA hacking tools and practices has raised a number of issues. It appears that
by weaponizing malware, viruses, Trojans, remote control systems and secretly
exploiting the vulnerabilities of popular software and hardware, the CIA's
hacking division has crossed the red line.
The latest WikiLeaks
exposure has given both enterprises and ordinary consumers of IT products
the shivers.
While former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden's revelations shed light on the extent
of US global surveillance, the WikiLeaks files offer an inside peek
at how the intrusion has been carried out.
WikiLeaks' "Year
Zero" document collection has introduced "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 US 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."
While the real magnitude
of the problem has yet to be evaluated, the question remains open,
whether the US government and Silicon Valley giants were aware of the
CIA's hacking problem.
Commenting on the
explosive leak Tuesday, Snowden tweeted: "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."
"The CIA reports
show the USG developing vulnerabilities in US products, then intentionally
keeping the holes open. Reckless beyond words," he added.
However,
besides targeting potential US adversaries overseas by penetrating
into their systems, it appears that the US intelligence community had no
scruples about exposing American citizens to both its spying
practices and potential data theft by external intruders.
"Evidence mounts
showing CIA & FBI knew about catastrophic weaknesses in the
most-used smartphones in America, but kept them open —
to spy," Snowden pointed out, referring to the leaked documents.
The WikiLeaks press release called
attention to the fact that "the same vulnerabilities exist
for the population at large, including the US 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, at the expense of leaving everyone
hackable," the press release stated.
Furthermore,
in addition to its capability to break into both civilian
and government systems, the CIA is capable of hiding the traces
of its intrusion and, what is more interesting, the intelligence agency
can also leave behind "fingerprints" belonging to hackers
from other nations due to its substantial library of attack
techniques "stolen" from malware produced in other states.
Meanwhile, on early
Tuesday, ArsTechnica.co.uk published an article describing the Data-wiping
malware program Shamoon and warning that the virus is likely to make a
successful comeback.
"Shamoon — the
mysterious disk wiper that popped up out of nowhere in 2012 and
took out more than 35,000 computers in a Saudi Arabian-owned gas
company before disappearing — is back," the media outlet wrote, citing Russian
multinational cybersecurity provider Kaspersky Lab.
The provider has revealed it
observed "three waves of attacks of the Shamoon 2.0 malware,
activated on 17 November 2016, 29 November 2016 and 23 January 2017."
While analyzing the
Shamoon 2.0 attacks, Kaspersky Lab stumbled upon a new wiper strikingly
similar to Shamoon. The company dubbed it "StoneDrill."
According to the
company, the new malware possesses an impressive ability to evade
detection and includes functions that are used for espionage purposes.
"StoneDrill has
several 'style' similarities to Shamoon, with multiple interesting
factors and techniques to allow for the better evasion
of detection," the press release said.
Kaspersky Lab remarked
that while Shamoon 2.0 appears to have a language ID of "Arabic
(Yemen)," suggesting the attackers might be from Yemen,
"StoneDrill" has the traces of the Persian language
in multiple resource sections.
The cybersecurity
provider stressed that the embedded language sections could have been
"false flags" intended to mislead investigators about the
origins of the malware.
So, what does Shamoon
have to do with the latest WikiLeaks disclosure?
The crux of the
matter is that the malware could have been used by the CIA's hacking group
for data destruction. This malware is described in the CIA files
as part of its Component Library.
"The UMBRAGE team
maintains a library of application development techniques borrowed
from in-the-wild malware. The goal of this repository is
to provide functional code snippets that can be rapidly combined
into custom solutions. Rather than building feature-rich tools, which
are often costly and can have significant CI value, this effort focuses
on developing smaller and more targeted solutions built
to operational specifications," one of the leaked
CIA files reads.
"When possible, each
item should include a working example of the technique (and/or pointer
to code in the SVN repository), documentation describing the
application of the technique, and notes concerning our use of these
techniques in delivered tools," it added.
In the section describing
components related to destroying data on a target system, the CIA
highlights the much-discussed Shamoon malware.
"The Shamoon malware
made use of a legitimate, signed driver from a commercial company
called Eldos," the CIA report says.
"This method is
quite obvious and trivial to implement, since it involves using a
signed driver to perform raw disk access. The biggest limitation is
that it requires the installation of a driver on the target
system," it adds.
While it does not
necessarily mean that the CIA could have been behind the recent attacks
mentioned by Kaspersky Lab, WikiLeaks files clearly indicate that the US
intelligence agency has weaponized and most probably reused the malware
for its own needs. The files also show that the CIA hacking group could
use "fingerprints" belonging to foreign hacking groups.
The question then arises,
where legal operative work ends and mere hacking begins.
Let’s Give the CIA the Credit It Deserves. “America’s
Fantastic Hacking Achievements”
By Norman Solomon
For months now, our
country has endured the tacit denigration of American ingenuity. Countless
statements — from elected officials, activist groups, journalists and many
others — have ignored our nation’s superb blend of dazzling high-tech
capacities and statecraft mendacities.
Fortunately, this week
the news about release of illuminating CIA
documents by WikiLeaks has begun to give adequate credit where due. And
not a moment too soon. For way too long, Russia has been credited with
prodigious hacking and undermining of democracy in the United States.
Many Americans have
overlooked the U.S. government’s fantastic hacking achievements. This is
most unfair and disrespectful to the dedicated men and women of intelligence
services like the CIA and NSA. Far from the limelight, they’ve been working diligently
to undermine democracy not just overseas but also here at home.
Today, the massive new
trove of CIA documents can help to put things in perspective. Maybe now people
will grasp that our nation’s undermining of democracy is home-grown and
self-actualized. It’s an insult to the ingenious capacities of the United
States of America to think that we can’t do it ourselves.
Contrary to all the
public relations work that U.S. intelligence agencies have generously done for
them, the Russians don’t even rank as peripheral to the obstacles and prospects
for American democracy. Rest assured, throughout the long history of the United
States, we haven’t needed foreigners to get the job done.
In our current era, can
Vladimir Putin take any credit for purging huge numbers of African Americans,
Latinos and other minority citizens from the voter rolls? Of course not.
Did Putin create and
maintain the barriers that prevented many low-income people from voting on
November 8? Only in his dreams.
Can the Kremlin hold a
candle to the corporate-owned cable TV channels that gave Donald Trump umpteen
free hours of uninterrupted air time for speeches at his campaign rallies?
Absolutely not.
Could any Russian
operation claim more than a tiny sliver of impact compared to the handiwork of
FBI Director James Comey as he boosted Donald Trump’s prospects with a pair of
gratuitous announcements about a gratuitously re-opened probe of Hillary
Clinton’s emails during the last days of the 2016 campaign? No way.
Is Putin anything but a
miniscule lightweight in any efforts to manipulate the U.S. electorate compared
to “dark money” American billionaires like the Koch brothers? Give us a break.
And how about the Fourth
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? The Kremlin can only marvel at the way that
the CIA, the NSA and the bipartisan leadership in Washington have shredded the
Fourth Amendment while claiming to uphold it.
To sum up: The CIA’s
efforts to tout Russia add up to jaw-dropping false modesty! The humility of
“deep state” leaders in Langley is truly awesome.
Let’s get a grip.
Overwhelmingly, the achievements of thwarting democracy in America have been
do-it-yourself operations. It’s about time that we give adequate credit to the
forces perpetuating this country’s self-inflicted wounds to American democracy.
To loosely paraphrase the
beloved comic-strip character Pogo, when the subject is grievous damage to
democracy at home, “We have met the ingenuity and it is U.S.” But we’re having
a terrible time recognizing ourselves.
Norman Solomon is
the coordinator of the online activist group RootsAction.org and the executive
director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen
books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to
Death.”
This article is licenced
under Creative Commons
The original source of
this article is Global Research
Copyright © Norman Solomon, Global Research, 2017
Copyright © Norman Solomon, Global Research, 2017
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