Tag Archives: Vault 7

Ex-CIA Engineer Who Leaked “Vault 7” Tools Convicted Of Biggest Theft In Agency History, by Tyler Durden

Posted on July 14, 2022 | 1 comment

Vault 7 was a treasure trove of the CIA’s secret computer hacking tools (see Trump and Vault 7). If you ever see a headline like: “U.S. authorities attribute latest hack to XYZ country,” there is no way U.S. authorities can definitely attribute a hack to any country. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

A former CIA software engineer who leaked the so-called “Vault 7” tools was convicted Wednesday of causing the largest theft of classified information in the history of the agency.

Joshua Schulte, who has been sitting behind bars without bail since 2018 and chose to defend himself at trial, told the jury that the CIA and FBI made him a scapegoat for the 2017 WikiLeaks release of up to 34 terabytes of information.

Separately, Schulte awaits trial on possession of child ponography and transport charges, which he has pleaded not guilty to, according to Military.com.

As part of his defense, Schulte claimed he was singled out because “hundreds of people had access to (the information),” adding “Hundreds of people could have stolen it.”

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The Deep State vs. WikiLeaks, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on April 21, 2019 | 1 comment

The US intelligence community is determined to destroy WikiLeaks. From Pepe Escobar at strategic-culture.org:

The Made by FBI indictment of Julian Assange does look like a dead man walking. No evidence. No documents. No surefire testimony. Just a crossfire of conditionals.

But never underestimate the legalese contortionism of US government (USG) functionaries. As much as Assange may not be characterized as a journalist and publisher, the thrust of the affidavit is to accuse him of conspiring to commit espionage.

In fact the charge is not even that Assange hacked a USG computer and obtained classified information; it’s that he may have discussed it with Chelsea Manning and may have had the intention to go for a hack. Orwellian-style thought crime charges don’t get any better than that. Now the only thing missing is an AI software to detect them.

Assange legal adviser Geoffrey Robertson – who also happens to represent another stellar political prisoner, Brazil’s Lula – cut straight to the chase (at 19:22 minutes); “The justice he is facing is justice, or injustice, in America… I would hope the British judges would have enough belief in freedom of information to throw out the extradition request.”

That’s far from a done deal. Thus the inevitable consequence; Assange’s legal team is getting ready to prove, no holds barred, in a British court, that this USG indictment for conspiracy to commit computer hacking is just an hors d’oeuvre for subsequent espionage charges, in case Assange is extradited to US soil.

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Does the CIA Vault 7 Leak Make America Less Safe? By Joe Jarvis

Posted on March 10, 2017 | Leave a comment

It’s hard to see how the CIA’s interest in French elections make us more safe. From Joe Jarvis at The Daily Bell via lewrockwell.com:

Has U.S. intelligence been irreparably damaged by the release of Vault 7, to the point where it puts America and it’s operations at risk?

Well, to a certain extent, yes. But that’s only a problem if you think the CIA was targeting and manipulating the right people and entities.

You have probably heard by now of the Wikileaks release of Vault 7, a CIA arsenal of cyber weapons including viruses and malware. The capabilities the CIA has been utilizing include taking over smart TV’s and smartphones to use their microphones and control their operations. The CIA can also get around popular encrypted messaging services like Whatsapp and Signal if they are used on an infected phone.

Among the list of possible targets of the collection are ‘Asset’, ‘Liason Asset’, ‘System Administrator’, ‘Foreign Information Operations’, ‘Foreign Intelligence Agencies’ and ‘Foreign Government Entities’. Notably absent is any reference to extremists or transnational criminals.

Emphasis added. Basically, this release confirmed everything we had already assumed was being done by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The interesting part is how the CIA used these espionage tools.

As Wikileaks noted, the CIA did not seem especially interested in ISIS, or drug cartels.

But the French Election did interest the CIA. We know they monitored the candidates to intercept communications. The CIA was especially interested in the prospects of French economic growth, specifically which candidates would follow “the German model of export-led growth.”

What does that say about the faltering French economy under Francois Hollande?

Exports have been shaky at best, with large differences month to month. Unemployment is up over 10%, and economic growth has failed to meet expectations.

So in addition to spying on the candidates, did the CIA use their cyber weapons to influence the election?

To continue reading: Does the CIA Vault 7 Leak Make America Less Safe?

 

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The most shocking revelation from the CIA spying scandal, by Simon Block

Posted on March 8, 2017 | Leave a comment

The Wikileak’s Vault 7 disclosures are probably the most significant revelation concerning how the CIA is destroying our civil liberties ever, and people are yawning. Watch the scene from Schindler’s List where the Jews think they’re going into a gas chamber. Nobody is yawning. From Simon Black at internationalman.com:

It happened again– another spying scandal in the Land of the Free.

Yesterday Wikileaks released 8,761 CIA documents detailing the agency’s hacking of smart phones, routers, computers, and even televisions.

These files reveal that the CIA can and has hacked devices that were supposedly secure– iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.

The documents further reveal that the CIA is deliberately infecting personal computers with spyware, including Windows, Mac OS/X, Solaris, Linux, and other operating systems.

They’re also hacking WiFi routers to deploy software that monitors Internet activity, and have even figured out how to bypass anti-virus software so that their spyware cannot be detected.

They’ve also managed to make the rest of the world believe that Russian hackers, not the CIA, are behind all this malware and spyware.

It’s like a restatement of that old Mission: Impossible line– “Should any of your IM force be caught or killed… we’ll blame Russia.”

The CIA is pretty shameless about its activities, nicknaming its various hacking programs “Assassin”, “Medusa”, and “Brutal Kangaroo”.

One of the deepest revelations is that the agency is able to hack Internet-connected televisions, including Samsung smart TVs, through a program called “Weeping Angel”.

Basically the CIA can turn your TV into a listening device, recording conversations in the room and transmitting the audio to a CIA server.

Even if you think the TV is off, it’s not.

CIA hackers have been able to spoof the on/off display and set the television to a “false off” mode.

Bottom line, no device that’s connected to the outside world is truly safe.

And future Wikileaks publications may show that the intelligence community is hacking home automation devices, Internet-connected automobiles (including driverless vehicles), and artificial intelligence like Amazon’s Alexa.

It’s hard to be shocked at this point that the government is spying on its own allies and citizens.

This is just the latest in a pattern of brazen surveillance and flagrant Constitutional violations on the part of the US intelligence community.

But that’s precisely what I find MOST concerning– the LACK of concern over these new CIA documents.

To continue reading: The most shocking revelation from the CIA spying scandal

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