Last month, following a series of seemingly random tweets by Wikileaks, we reported that starting on February 4th, each day Wikileaks began sending out a series of cryptic question Tweets teasing the world about “Vault 7”. The questions were framed in Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How format (but not in that order). Each came with an image “clue”.
Here they are in chronological order starting with the earliest.
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- What: The first tweet shows a picture of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
- Where: The second tweet shows a picture of a vault in a former salt mine in Merkers, Germany where Nazis stored money, gold, paintings, and other valuables during World War II. This mine vault was captured by the United States in April 1945.
- When: The third tweet shows a picture of a Pratt & Whitney F119 airplane engine, which is the engine for the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor. The picture in the tweet was taken on April 9th, 2010 at Langley Air Force Base as part of a story published on April 12th about the soundproof “hush houses” used for jet engine testing.
- Who: The fourth tweet shows a picture of the Manning, Assange, and Snowden “infamous spies” posters released by the Defense Security Service.
- Why: The fifth tweet shows a picture from the article Keeping Structures Strong, which discusses the 509th Civil Engineer Squadron’s work repairing infrastructure on Whiteman Air Force Base. The specific picture tweeted is captioned “Staff Sgt. Adam Boyd, 509th Civil Engineer Squadron structural supervisor, welds a box blade for a snow plow, Feb. 27. Structures Airmen perform jobs such as this one to save the Air Force from having to possibly spend money on parts made by civilian companies.”
- How: Or, more specifically, “How did #Vault7 make its way to WikiLeaks?” The sixth tweet shows a picture of “Surveillance of mailboxes in Berlin”. The picture is caption “When mailboxes were being observed by Stasi agents, every person posting a letter was photographed. Some films found in the Stasi archives also show persons dressed in civilian clothing emptying the mailbox after the conclusion of the surveillance action.”
While it is possible that Vault 7 is directly related to one of these pictures, these pictures may just be representative images, part of some sort of pattern, or clues about the answers to the corresponding questions. As the pictures are images of entirely different things (and no longer just pictures of vaults), each individual picture being related to the answer of the question tweeted along with it seems quite plausible.
Then, after a flurry of appearances over a month ago, the topic of “Vault 7” faded away from the Wikileaks twitter account, until Monday evening, when in a tweet around 7:30pm, Wikileaks announced that it had released an encrypted ‘torrent’ file, just over 500 MB in size and which can be downloaded now at the following URL, will be made accessible for everyone tomorrow at 9am ET when Wikileaks releases the passphrase.
ENCRYPTED RELEASE Use a ‘torrent’ downloader on: https://file.wikileaks.org/torrent/WikiLeaks-Year-Zero-2017-v1.7z.torrent … And ‘7z’ to decrypt. Passphrase will be made public at Tue 9am ET.
In subsequent tweets, Wikileaks provides further information on how to unzip the encrypted file contained in the torrent.
WikiLeaksVerified account @wikileaks
How to unarchive a “.7z” (7zip) file: Use a 7zip program. Many are available for Windows/Mac/Linux. Internet search for “7zip”.
1) Install ‘transmission’ (https://transmissionbt.com/download/ ) 2) download https://file.wikileaks.org/torrent/WikiLeaks-Year-Zero-2017-v1.7z.torrent … 3) install ‘7zip’ 4) use it to unpack ‘.7z’ file
WikiLeaks Retweeted WikiLeaks
To unpack Vault 7, part one: “Year Zero”, on a Mac, you can use this ‘.7z’ unarchiver http://unarchiver.c3.cx/unarchiver
Why unveil the contents of “Vault 7”, which some have speculated is a form of an insurance policy for Julian Assange? It may have something to do with Saturday’s report that Guillermo Lasso, the frontrunner in Ecuador’s presidential election, whose runoff round will take place on April 2, has warned that he will ask “Assange to leave our [London] embassy.” Or it could be something totally different.
For now, there is no indication what is contained on the released torrent, although we are confident that many will have it downloaded and looking forward to tomorrow’s 9am release of the password to unlock the contents of the mysterious file.
Uh Jimbo,might I suggest a excellent STRONG cup of coffee and rethink what you have posted/asked for!
I don’t get all the cryptic theatrics. Just fuckin’ release the shit already.
I don’t get it either. They kept up with that shit during the election, threatening to release this or that. By the time they released anything it was too late because the Hillarytards in the media had already launched their defensive dismissals.
Building suspense makes otherwise bland content more exciting.
The closer to the center of the vortex, the more interesting it becomes. My perception is that someone is about to remove a corner card in the massive house of cards. Things will never be the same! Get ready to rumble!
This is all part of the apocalypse, the period of “the lifting of the veil”. Truths revealed.
There has been zero proof of life in regards to Julian Assange since October of 2016. Up until that date wikileaks was dropping damaging information on an hourly basis, then special ops units from the British Intelligence agencies showed up, his Internet connection was cut and he vanished from public view. The wikileaks torrent shut down and that’s where we’ve been since that time, with the exception of alleged visits by the spirit cooking enthusiast Pamela Anderson and her “box lunch”.
The closest thing to “proof” is the account of Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, human rights activist, and writer. There was an alleged interview with Sean Hannity as well, but as we all know recorded interviews, videotapes, etc. are not the same thing as the appearance of a living body and it has been close to five months since he has appeared to the public.
I wouldn’t trust anything from wikileaks since that time.
What do you consider proof?
Here’s one since Oct, 2016: http://www.inquisitr.com/3747920/julian-assange-alive-wikileaks-founder-makes-first-live-appearance-in-weeks-amid-conspiracy-theories-that-he-had-died/
There are others.
I don’t really know what to think about who or what is behind this. I am however for transparency no matter how it comes about, or who brings it to us.
Deep state versus US perhaps. Regardless, when it comes to use of the internet , privacy is no longer an option.
https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/
Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed
CIA malware targets iPhone, Android, smart TVs
CIA malware and hacking tools are built by EDG (Engineering Development Group), a software development group within CCI (Center for Cyber Intelligence), a department belonging to the CIA’s DDI (Directorate for Digital Innovation). The DDI is one of the five major directorates of the CIA (see this organizational chart of the CIA for more details).
The EDG is responsible for the development, testing and operational support of all backdoors, exploits, malicious payloads, trojans, viruses and any other kind of malware used by the CIA in its covert operations world-wide.
The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell’s 1984, but “Weeping Angel”, developed by the CIA’s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.
The attack against Samsung smart TVs was developed in cooperation with the United Kingdom’s MI5/BTSS. After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a ‘Fake-Off’ mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on. In ‘Fake-Off’ mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server.
As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.
The CIA’s Mobile Devices Branch (MDB) developed numerous attacks to remotely hack and control popular smart phones. Infected phones can be instructed to send the CIA the user’s geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone’s camera and microphone.
Despite iPhone’s minority share (14.5%) of the global smart phone market in 2016, a specialized unit in the CIA’s Mobile Development Branch produces malware to infest, control and exfiltrate data from iPhones and other Apple products running iOS, such as iPads. CIA’s arsenal includes numerous local and remote “zero days” developed by CIA or obtained from GCHQ, NSA, FBI or purchased from cyber arms contractors such as Baitshop. The disproportionate focus on iOS may be explained by the popularity of the iPhone among social, political, diplomatic and business elites.
A similar unit targets Google’s Android which is used to run the majority of the world’s smart phones (~85%) including Samsung, HTC and Sony. 1.15 billion Android powered phones were sold last year. “Year Zero” shows that as of 2016 the CIA had 24 “weaponized” Android “zero days” which it has developed itself and obtained from GCHQ, NSA and cyber arms contractors.
These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the “smart” phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.
Didn’t Geraldo Rivera try this vault stuff before?
At the time of this comment, CNN and MSNBC are not reporting this on their websites. FOX is.
Its really not that hard to imagine this. Lefties will scream that trump is a fascist, conveniently ignoring that these programs have been knocking around since the Clinton era, which means their Human God Obama will be culpable as well.
No government should have this much power.
A total of 8,761 documents have been published as part of ‘Year Zero’, the first in a series of leaks the whistleblower organization has dubbed ‘Vault 7.’ WikiLeaks said that ‘Year Zero’ revealed details of the CIA’s “global covert hacking program,” including “weaponized exploits” used against company products including “Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.”
WikiLeaks tweeted the leak, which it claims came from a network inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.
Among the more notable disclosures which, if confirmed, “would rock the technology world”, the CIA had managed to bypass encryption on popular phone and messaging services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. According to the statement from WikiLeaks, government hackers can penetrate Android phones and collect “audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.”
Another profound revelation is that the CIA can engage in “false flag” cyberattacks which portray Russia as the assailant. Discussing the CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s UMBRAGE group, Wikileaks’ source notes that it “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. UMBRAGE components cover keyloggers, password collection, webcam capture, data destruction, persistence, privilege escalation, stealth, anti-virus (PSP) avoidance and survey techniques.”
As Kim Dotcom summarizes this finding, “CIA uses techniques to make cyber attacks look like they originated from enemy state. It turns DNC/Russia hack allegation by CIA into a JOKE”
So, the question now is ‘Did Obama have Brennan/CIA hack the election while pretending to be the Russians?’
This should be entertaining.
Re: gov. infiltration into “smart” devices and TVs.. didn’t we already know this? or assume it?
But perhaps what is most notable is the purported emergence of another Snowden-type whistleblower: the source of the information told WikiLeaks in a statement that they wish to initiate a public debate about the “security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.” Policy questions that should be debated in public include “whether the CIA’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency,” WikiLeaks claims the source said.
The FAQ section of the release, shown below, provides further details on the extent of the leak, which was “obtained recently and covers through 2016”. The time period covered in the latest leak is between the years 2013 and 2016, according to the CIA timestamps on the documents themselves. Secondly, WikiLeaks has asserted that it has not mined the entire leak and has only verified it, asking that journalists and activists do the leg work.
Among the various techniques profiled by WikiLeaks is “Weeping Angel”, developed by the CIA’s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones. After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a ‘Fake-Off’ mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on. In ‘Fake-Off’ mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server.
As Kim Dotcom chimed in on Twitter, “CIA turns Smart TVs, iPhones, gaming consoles and many other consumer gadgets into open microphones” and added ” CIA turned every Microsoft Windows PC in the world into spyware. Can activate backdoors on demand, including via Windows update”
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor stated that “There is an extreme proliferation risk in the development of cyber ‘weapons’. Comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled proliferation of such ‘weapons’, which results from the inability to contain them combined with their high market value, and the global arms trade. But the significance of “Year Zero” goes well beyond the choice between cyberwar and cyberpeace. The disclosure is also exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective.”
Key Highlights from the Vault 7 release so far:
“Year Zero” introduces 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 U.S. 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.
Wikileaks claims that the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.
By the end of 2016, the CIA’s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other “weaponized” malware. Such is the scale of the CIA’s undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook.
The CIA had created, in effect, its “own NSA” with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified.
Once a single cyber ‘weapon’ is ‘loose’ it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by rival states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.
Snowden 2.0?
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.
CIA targets iPhones, Androids, smart TVs:
CIA malware and hacking tools are built by EDG (Engineering Development Group), a software development group within CCI (Center for Cyber Intelligence), a department belonging to the CIA’s DDI (Directorate for Digital Innovation). The DDI is one of the five major directorates of the CIA (see this organizational chart of the CIA for more details).
The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell’s 1984, but “Weeping Angel”, developed by the CIA’s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.
Also cars, suggesting that the CIA may have a role in the death of Michael Hastings:
As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks.
The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.
And computers:
The CIA also runs a very substantial effort to infect and control Microsoft Windows users with its malware. This includes multiple local and remote weaponized “zero days”, air gap jumping viruses such as “Hammer Drill” which infects software distributed on CD/DVDs, infectors for removable media such as USBs, systems to hide data in images or in covert disk areas ( “Brutal Kangaroo”) and to keep its malware infestations going.
Hoarding of Zero Day exploits:
In the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks about the NSA, the U.S. technology industry secured a commitment from the Obama administration that the executive would disclose on an ongoing basis — rather than hoard — serious vulnerabilities, exploits, bugs or “zero days” to Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other US-based manufacturers.
Serious vulnerabilities not disclosed to the manufacturers places huge swathes of the population and critical infrastructure at risk to foreign intelligence or cyber criminals who independently discover or hear rumors of the vulnerability. If the CIA can discover such vulnerabilities so can others.
Proliferation of leaked/hacked Cyberwar programs:
While nuclear proliferation has been restrained by the enormous costs and visible infrastructure involved in assembling enough fissile material to produce a critical nuclear mass, cyber ‘weapons’, once developed, are very hard to retain. Cyber ‘weapons’ are in fact just computer programs which can be pirated like any other. Since they are entirely comprised of information they can be copied quickly with no marginal cost.
Over the last three years the United States intelligence sector, which consists of government agencies such as the CIA and NSA and their contractors, such as Booze Allan Hamilton, has been subject to unprecedented series of data exfiltrations by its own workers.
Once a single cyber ‘weapon’ is ‘loose’ it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by peer states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.
The U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt is a covert CIA hacker base
In addition to its operations in Langley, Virginia the CIA also uses the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt as a covert base for its hackers covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa. CIA hackers operating out of the Frankfurt consulate ( “Center for Cyber Intelligence Europe” or CCIE) are given diplomatic (“black”) passports and State Department cover.
The instructions for incoming CIA hackers make Germany’s counter-intelligence efforts appear inconsequential: “Breeze through German Customs because you have your cover-for-action story down pat, and all they did was stamp your passport”
Examples of CIA projects
The CIA’s Engineering Development Group (EDG) management system contains around 500 different projects (only some of which are documented by “Year Zero”) each with their own sub-projects, malware and hacker tools. The majority of these projects relate to tools that are used for penetration, infestation (“implanting”), control, and exfiltration.
Umbrage: 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.
Fine Dining: Fine Dining comes with a standardized questionnaire i.e menu that CIA case officers fill out. The questionnaire is used by the agency’s OSB (Operational Support Branch) to transform the requests of case officers into technical requirements for hacking attacks (typically “exfiltrating” information from computer systems) for specific operations. 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.
‘Improvise’; a toolset for configuration, post-processing, payload setup and execution vector selection for survey/exfiltration tools supporting all major operating systems like Windows (Bartender), MacOS (JukeBox) and Linux (DanceFloor).
HIVE: HIVE is a multi-platform CIA malware suite and its associated control software. The project provides customizable implants for Windows, Solaris, MikroTik (used in internet routers) and Linux platforms and a Listening Post (LP)/Command and Control (C2) infrastructure to communicate with these implants. The implants are configured to communicate via HTTPS with the webserver of a cover domain; each operation utilizing these implants has a separate cover domain and the infrastructure can handle any number of cover domains.
And some key sections from the FAQ:
What time period is covered? The years 2013 to 2016. The sort order of the pages within each level is determined by date (oldest first). WikiLeaks has obtained the CIA’s creation/last modification date for each page but these do not yet appear for technical reasons. Usually the date can be discerned or approximated from the content and the page order. If it is critical to know the exact time/date contact WikiLeaks.
What is “Vault 7” “Vault 7” is a substantial collection of material about CIA activities obtained by WikiLeaks.
What is the total size of “Vault 7”? The series is the largest intelligence publication in history.
When was each part of “Vault 7” obtained?: Part one was obtained recently and covers through 2016. Details on the other parts will be available at the time of publication.
Is each part of “Vault 7” from a different source? Details on the other parts will be available at the time of publication.
How did WikiLeaks obtain each part of “Vault 7”? Sources trust WikiLeaks to not reveal information that might help identify them.
Isn’t WikiLeaks worried that the CIA will act against its staff to stop the series? No. That would be certainly counter-productive.
* * *
Everyone clamouring for self driving cars should read this..
https://www.infowars.com/wikileaks-cia-explored-car-hacking-to-carry-out-undetectable-assassinations/
Michael Hastings.
I downloaded the files and thumbed through them. Just some manuals on software and screenshots. No real smoking gun. Maybe there will be later dump that is meaningful.
Snowden: What The Wikileaks Revelations Show Is “Reckless Beyond Words”
by Tyler Durden
Mar 7, 2017 2:29 PM
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.”
His conclusion, one which many of the so-called conspiratorial bent would say was well-known long ago: “Evidence mounts showing CIA & FBI knew about catastrophic weaknesses in the most-used smartphones in America, but kept them open — to spy.”
To which the increasingly prevalent response has become: “obviously.”
Thank you Admin,
About cars: get an older car and systematically rebuild that sucker
with a conglomeration of worthwhile parts. No GPS in the package.
About phones: Do not have a smart phone (as much as you love it)
because it is a GPS and it can listen to your conversations, apparently
at will.
About computers: watch out!