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CIA malware and hacking tools

wikileaks.org

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Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#161

Post by tmaly »

Spooky23 wrote: post #42
rosalinekarr wrote: post #20

This idea that the government should somehow be exempt from proper cybersecurity ethics is disgusting. When the CIA or the NSA find zero day attacks in software, they should report them immediately to be fixed, not build tools specifically to exploit them. It's only a matter of time before these attacks either leak or are rediscovered by other malicious parties. The government is effectively turning their own people…

I think that's an absurd position. The government has a need to be able to access hostile systems. A hacked computer can avoid armed conflict where people die. A better question is... why aren't major vendors devoting a fraction of the resources to find this stuff and fix t on their own?

Or Why don't we have like a "Open BSD" equivalent on the Android Platform?

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#162

Post by travmatt »

alphonsegaston wrote: post #144
Bartweiss wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> saying Russia has "vibrant" criticism of Putin's regime No, he didn't. I know The Guardian said he did, but they mislead readers so badly that the interviewer they were quoting specifically called them out for bad journalism. Wikileaks has gone off the rails lately, but the "vibrant" thing is from a hitpiece that's inaccurate in almost every way. Assange said "In Russia, there are many vibrant publications, online…

I literally linked to the actual interview. I know exactly what he said and my original statement still stands. And there's so much "vibrant" criticism in Russia that the guy he mentions is in prison? If that doesn't refute his argument (assuming it wasn't ironic), I don't know what does. Here's someone who also went to prison for protesting against Putin who says that Assange uses rhetorical dodges, but it's out in…

The very famously anti-Putin pussy riot has stated that Wikileaks has become a Russian propaganda front. I wonder why Wikileaks didn't cite them as part of their 'vibrant ciriticism'?

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#163

Post by phpnode »

thraway2016 wrote: post #133

EDIT: This post is no longer relevant. Meta: 351 points in Conclusion: HN is flagging this fairly aggressively. Question: Why? This is not overtly political, and it is definitely in the interest of the community, with the potential to be at least half as interesting as the Snowden documents or the hack of Hacking Team.

I didn't flag it, but I'd imagine a lot of people don't trust the source (any more).

Edit: Why the downvotes? I didn't indicate my position, I pointed out that some people don't trust WikiLeaks any more, which is obvious - go and look at the responses they get on twitter.

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#165

Post by publicfig »

thraway2016 wrote: post #133

EDIT: This post is no longer relevant. Meta: 351 points in Conclusion: HN is flagging this fairly aggressively. Question: Why? This is not overtly political, and it is definitely in the interest of the community, with the potential to be at least half as interesting as the Snowden documents or the hack of Hacking Team.

There are multiple articles for this topic on the front page. This is currently the top post but I think they're having issues merging in other discussions into this one. I keep seeing this flash in the top spot then see it redirect incorrectly/disappear temporarily.

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#166

Post by kweks »

agumonkey wrote: post #94
TheArcane wrote: post #40

"U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt is a covert CIA hacker base " Germans are usually privacy nuts. I know many who maintain no presence on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I wonder how Germany will react to this.

Not long ago it was hinted that US ambassy in Paris is a nice CIA antenna too. Nobody denied nobody answered, question still up in the air. Also, latest Russian project, a large church-like building in Paris is suspected to hide intel dept.

Poster is referring to this thing, for anyone curious:

http://www.gettyimages.fr/%C3%A9v%C3%A9nement/russian-orthod...

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#167

Post by travmatt »

Bartweiss wrote: post #121
alphonsegaston wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy went from "cryptoanarchy" to having a TV show on RT(a propaganda network)and saying Russia has "vibrant" criticism of Putin's regime (beyond absurd). Not to mention him somehow being able to facilitate Snowden's entry into Russia. I'm no fan of imperialist American foreign policy, but Russia is just as grotesque. http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2016/12/23/news/assange_wiki...

> saying Russia has "vibrant" criticism of Putin's regime No, he didn't. I know The Guardian said he did, but they mislead readers so badly that the interviewer they were quoting specifically called them out for bad journalism. Wikileaks has gone off the rails lately, but the "vibrant" thing is from a hitpiece that's inaccurate in almost every way. Assange said "In Russia, there are many vibrant publications, online…

''' A member of Russian punk band Pussy Riot says WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange directly collaborates with Moscow.

“But Julian Assange, he openly works with [Russia],” Nadya Tolokno told The Daily Beast in an interview Thursday. "It’s not a secret. He’s connected with the Russian government, and I feel that he’s proud of it.

“I generally support the work that WikiLeaks is doing, but I’m not that thrilled about his decisions that are unethical, in my view, concerning his connections to the Russian government.” Tolokno said she visited Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London two years ago, saying their meeting convinced her WikiLeaks has ties to the Kremlin.

“He couldn’t deny it,” said Tolokno, whose full name is Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. "He often works with the Russian propaganda machine, and he doesn’t try to hide it.

“Julian Assange doesn’t try to hide that fact because he hosts at the Ecuadorian Embassy the editor-in-chief of the Russian propaganda team, Russia Today, and he has projects with them,” she added.

Tolokno added she confronted Assange about advancing Russian interests ahead of America’s.

“I understood his position: He’s in a state of war with the American government,” she said. "He’s smart and charismatic and will use any means to destroy the American government.

“And we had a conversation if it was really the ethical thing to do that with the hands of another government [Russia] which is, in fact, much worse and a real authoritarian government.” ''' http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/303172-puss...

That's what anti-putin russian activists think of wikileaks.

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#168

Post by artursapek »

imron wrote: post #66

The CIA's Remote Devices Branch's UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques 'stolen' from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation. With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the "fingerprints" of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from. Th…

That video of Hillary touting that "17 different intelligence agencies yada yada Russia is who hacked my emails" is going to be even more amusing now.

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#169

Post by djsumdog »

pjc50 wrote: post #142
apo wrote: post #92

In what is surely one of the most astounding intelligence own goals in living memory, the CIA structured its classification regime such that for the most market valuable part of "Vault 7" — the CIA's weaponized malware (implants + zero days), Listening Posts (LP), and Command and Control (C2) systems — the agency has little legal recourse. The CIA made these systems unclassified. Why the CIA chose to make its cyberar…

> Command & Control and Listening Post software were classified, then CIA officers could be prosecuted or dismissed for violating rules that prohibit placing classified information onto the Internet. Consequently the CIA has secretly made most of its cyber spying/war code unclassified. This is almost hilarious. Not that being classified would make any difference: cyber-"weapons" have something in common with biologic…

The US chemical weapons program is downright frightening. Unlike these exploits which you can just leave in an office and never use (and which con subsequently go stale as people find and patch exploits), chemical weapons were stored in massive US facilities and many of them have started leaking over the years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjA0EQPeUGM

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#170

Post by jMyles »

phpnode wrote: post #163
thraway2016 wrote: post #133

EDIT: This post is no longer relevant. Meta: 351 points in Conclusion: HN is flagging this fairly aggressively. Question: Why? This is not overtly political, and it is definitely in the interest of the community, with the potential to be at least half as interesting as the Snowden documents or the hack of Hacking Team.

I didn't flag it, but I'd imagine a lot of people don't trust the source (any more). Edit: Why the downvotes? I didn't indicate my position, I pointed out that some people don't trust WikiLeaks any more, which is obvious - go and look at the responses they get on twitter.

Did I miss a memo? Wikileaks has done tireless work in this field and has largely been correct about its claims and the authenticity of its documents.

If not Wikileaks, whom do we trust for this sort of info?

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