Tag Archives: Wikileaks

Assange Reminds The World: “The Potential For The Disastrous Rise Of Misplaced Power Persists”

Posted on April 13, 2017 | Leave a comment

Julian Assange issues what’s basically a mission statement for WikiLeaks. From Assange on a guest editorial at The Washington Post via zerohedge.com:

On his last night in office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a powerful farewell speech to the nation — words so important that he’d spent a year and a half preparing them. “Ike” famously warned the nation to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Much of Eisenhower’s speech could form part of the mission statement of WikiLeaks today. We publish truths regarding overreaches and abuses conducted in secret by the powerful.

Our most recent disclosures describe the CIA’s multibillion-dollar cyberwarfare program, in which the agency created dangerous cyberweapons, targeted private companies’ consumer products and then lost control of its cyber-arsenal. Our source(s) said they hoped to initiate a principled public debate about the “security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.”

The truths we publish are inconvenient for those who seek to avoid one of the magnificent hallmarks of American life — public debate. Governments assert that WikiLeaks’ reporting harms security. Some claim that publishing facts about military and national security malfeasance is a greater problem than the malfeasance itself. Yet, as Eisenhower emphasized, “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Quite simply, our motive is identical to that claimed by the New York Times and The Post — to publish newsworthy content. Consistent with the U.S. Constitution, we publish material that we can confirm to be true irrespective of whether sources came by that truth legally or have the right to release it to the media. And we strive to mitigate legitimate concerns, for example by using redaction to protect the identities of at-risk intelligence agents.

To continue reading: Assange Reminds The World: “The Potential For The Disastrous Rise Of Misplaced Power Persists”

Advertisements

Leave a comment

Posted in Government, Media

Tagged ,

WikiLeaks Reveals “Marble”: Proof CIA Disguises Their Hacks As Russian, Chinese, Arabic… by Tyler Durden

Posted on March 31, 2017 | 1 comment

The latest from Wikileaks documents CIA hacking practices, particularly its ability to disguise its hacks. From  Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

WikiLeaks’ latest Vault 7 release contains a batch of documents, named ‘Marble’, which detail CIA hacking tactics and how they can misdirect forensic investigators from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to their agency by inserted code fragments in foreign languages. The tool was in use as recently as 2016. Per the WikiLeaks release:

“The source code shows that Marble has test examples not just in English but also in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi. This would permit a forensic attribution double game, for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English, but Chinese, but then showing attempts to conceal the use of Chinese, drawing forensic investigators even more strongly to the wrong conclusion, — but there are other possibilities, such as hiding fake error messages.”

 

Follow
WikiLeaks ✔@wikileaks
RELEASE: CIA Vault 7 part 3 “Marble” https://wikileaks.org/vault7/?marble#Marble%20Framework … #Vault7
2:58 AM – 31 Mar 2017
3,110 3,110 Retweets 2,862 2,862 likes

The latest release is said to potentially allow for ‘thousands’ of cyber attacks to be attributed to the CIA which were originally blamed on foreign governments.

WikiLeaks said Marble hides fragments of texts that would allow for the author of the malware to be identified. WikiLeaks stated the technique is the digital equivalent of a specialized CIA tool which disguises English language text on US produced weapons systems before they are provided to insurgents.

It’s “designed to allow for flexible and easy-to-use obfuscation” as “string obfuscation algorithms” often link malware to a specific developer, according to the whistleblowing site.

The source code released reveals Marble contains test examples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi.

To continue reading: WikiLeaks Reveals “Marble”: Proof CIA Disguises Their Hacks As Russian, Chinese, Arabic…

1 Comment

Posted in Government, Intelligence, Technology

Tagged , ,

Oh, that traitorous WikiTrump, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on March 16, 2017 | Leave a comment

In some weird corners of the media, the Wikileaks Vault 7 revelations are less important than so far completely unsubstantiated allegations that the Russians “hacked” the election. From Pepe Escobar at atimes.com:

Nothing so trivial as the technical proof we’re all being spied upon can be allowed to threaten or add nuance to established narrative

The massive WikiLeaks Vault 7 release is an extremely important public service. It’s hard to find anyone not concerned by a secret CIA hacking program targeting virtually the whole planet – using malware capable of bypassing encryption protection on any device from iOS to Android, and from Windows to Samsung TVs.

In a series of tweets, Edward Snowden confirmed the CIA program and said code names in the documents are real; that they could only be known by a “cleared insider;” the FBI and CIA knew all about the digital loopholes, but kept them open to spy; and that the leaks provided the “first public evidence” that the US government secretly paid to keep US software unsafe.

If that’s not serious enough, WikiLeaks alleges that “the CIA has lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal;” several hundred million lines of code — more than what is used to run Facebook.

Someone among the former US government hackers and contractors ended up leaking portions of the CIA archive (Snowden II?). WikiLeaks also stressed how the CIA had created, in effect, its “own NSA” – maximum unaccountability included.

Even though millions already knew – without the technical details – that they were being spied upon by their iPhone or their 4K Samsung, the Vault 7 revelations are far more relevant – and practical – to the average citizen than the 24/7 hysteria fingering President Trump as a Putin puppet. Intel sources are volunteering the – still unexplored – Vault 7 treasure trove is more crucial than what Snowden himself revealed.

To continue reading: Relax, Global Citizen; The CIA Is Benign & Benevolent

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Intelligence, Privacy, Surveillance

Tagged , ,

A CIA Cyber False Flag, by Federico Pieraccinni

Posted on March 14, 2017 | Leave a comment

We’ve only seen less than 1 percent of what Wikileaks has from the CIA and it is already apparent that the CIA’s cyber capabilities are mind boggling. From Federico Pieraccinni at strategic-culture.org:

New revelations from Wikileaks’ ‘Vault 7’ leak shed a disturbing light on the safeguarding of privacy. Something already known and largely suspected has now become documented by Wikileaks. It seems evident that the CIA is now a state within a state, an entity out of control that has even arrived at the point of creating its own hacking network in order to avoid the scrutiny of the NSA and other agencies.

Reading the revelations contained in the documents released by WikiLeaks and adding them to those already presented in recent years by Snowden, it now seems evident that the technological aspect regarding espionage is a specialty in which the CIA, as far as we know, excels. Hardware and software vendors that are complicit — most of which are American, British or Israeli — give the CIA the opportunity to achieve informational full-spectrum dominance, relegating privacy to extinction. Such a convergence of power, money and technology entails major conflicts of interest, as can be seen in the case of Amazon AWS (Amazon’s Cloud Service), cloud provider for the CIA, whose owner, Jeff Bezos, is also the owner of The Washington Post. It is a clear overlap of private interests that conflicts with the theoretical need to declare uncomfortable truths without the need to consider orders numbering in the millions of dollars from clients like the CIA.

While it is just one example, there are thousands more out there. The perverse interplay between media, spy agencies and politicians has compromised the very meaning of the much vaunted democracy of the land of the Stars and Stripes. The constant scandals that are beamed onto our screens now serve the sole purpose of advancing the deep interest of the Washington establishment. In geopolitical terms, it is now more than obvious that the deep state has committed all available means toward sabotaging any dialogue and détente between the United States and Russia. In terms of news, the Wikileaks revelations shed light on the methods used by US intelligence agencies like the CIA to place blame on the Kremlin, or networks associated with it, for the hacking that occurred during the American elections.

To continue reading: A CIA Cyber False Flag

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Intelligence, Privacy, Surveillance, Uncategorized

Tagged ,

Do We Live in a Police State? by Justin Raimondo

Posted on March 10, 2017 | Leave a comment

Yes, according to Justin Raimondo. From Raimondo at antiwar.com:

WikiLeaks and Julian Assange would have gone down in history as the greatest enemies of government oppression of all kinds in any case, but their latest release – a comprehensive exposé of the US intelligence community’s cyberwar tools and techniques – is truly the capstone of their career. And given that this release – dubbed “Vault 7” – amounts to just one percent of the documents they intend to publish, one can only look forward to the coming days with a mixture of joyful anticipation and ominous fear.

Fear because the power of the Deep State is even more forbidding – and seemingly invincible – than anyone knew. Joyful anticipation because, for the first time, it is dawning on the most unlikely people that we are, for all intents and purposes, living in a police state. I was struck by this while watching Sean Hannity’s show last [Wednesday] night – yes, Fox is my go-to news channel – and listening to both Hannity and his guests, including the ultra-conservative Laura Ingraham, inveigh against the “Deep State.” For people like Hannity, Ingraham, and Newt Gingrich (of all people!) to be talking about the Surveillance State with fear – and outrage – in their voices says two things about our current predicament: 1) Due to the heroic efforts of Julian Assange in exposing the power and ruthlessness of the Deep State, the political landscape in this country is undergoing a major realignment, with conservatives returning to their historic role as the greatest defenders of civil liberties, and 2) American “liberalism” – which now champions the Deep State as the savior of the country – has become a toxic brew that is fundamentally totalitarian.

On the first point: yes, there are more than a few holdouts, like Bill O’Reilly and the neocons, but the latter are increasingly isolated, and the former is increasingly irrelevant. What we are seeing, as the role of the “intelligence community” in basically leading a seditious conspiracy against a sitting President is revealed, is a complete switch in the political polarities in this country: what passes for the “left” has become the biggest advocate of the Surveillance State, and the rising populist right is coming to the hard-won conclusion that we are rapidly becoming a police state.

To continue reading: Do We Live in a Police State?

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Intelligence, Privacy, Surveillance

Tagged

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

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Intelligence, Surveillance

Tagged , ,

Snowden: What The Wikileaks Revelations Show Is “Reckless Beyond Words”, by Tyler Durden

Posted on March 8, 2017 | Leave a comment

Here’s Edward Snowden’s first impression of the Wikileak’s Vault 7 revelations, via Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

While it has been superficially covered by much of the press – and one can make the argument that what Julian Assange has revealed is more relevant to the US population, than constant and so far unconfirmed speculation that Trump is a puppet of Putin – the fallout from the Wikileaks’ “Vault 7” release this morning of thousands of documents demonstrating the extent to which the CIA uses backdoors to hack smartphones, computer operating systems, messenger applications and internet-connected televisions, will be profound.

As evidence of this, the WSJ cites an intelligence source who said that “the revelations were far more significant than the leaks of Edward Snowden.”

Mr. Snowden’s leaks revealed names of programs, companies that assist the NSA in surveillance and in some cases the targets of American spying. But the recent leak purports to contain highly technical details about how surveillance is carried out. That would make them far more revealing and useful to an adversary, this person said. In one sense, Mr. Snowden provided a briefing book on U.S. surveillance, but the CIA leaks could provide the blueprints.

Speaking of Snowden, the former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower, who now appears to have a “parallel whisteblower” deep inside the “Deep State”, i.e., the source of the Wikileaks data – also had some thoughts on today’s CIA dump.

In a series of tweets, Snowden notes that “what @Wikileaks has here is genuinely a big deal“, and makes the following key observations “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” and adds that “the CIA reports show the USG developing vulnerabilities in US products, then intentionally keeping the holes open. Reckless beyond words.”

He then asks rhetorically “Why is this dangerous?” and explains “Because until closed, any hacker can use the security hole the CIA left open to break into any iPhone in the world.”

To continue reading: Snowden: What The Wikileaks Revelations Show Is “Reckless Beyond Words”

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Intelligence, Surveillance

Tagged ,