WikiLeaks: CIA has targeted everyday gadgets for snooping
NEW YORK: Maybe the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is spying on you through your television set after all.
Documents released by WikiLeaks allege a CIA surveillance program that targets everyday gadgets ranging from smart TVs to smartphones to cars. Such snooping, WikiLeaks said, could turn some of these devices into recorders of everyday conversations — and could also circumvent data-scrambling encryption on communications apps such as Facebook’s WhatsApp.
WikiLeaks is, for now, withholding details on the specific hacks used “until a consensus emerges” on the nature of the CIA’s program and how the methods should be “analyzed, disarmed and published.” But WikiLeaks — a nonprofit that routinely publishes confidential documents, frequently from government sources — claims that the data and documents it obtained reveal a broad program to bypass security measures on everyday products.
If true, the disclosure could spark new privacy tensions between the government and the technology industry. Relations have been fraught since 2013, when former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden disclosed secret NSA surveillance of phone and digital communications.
Just last year, the two sides feuded over the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) calls for Apple to rewrite its operating system so that agents could break into the locked iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers. The FBI ultimately broke into the phone with the help of an outside party; the agency has neither disclosed the party nor the nature of the vulnerability, preventing Apple from fixing it.
According to WikiLeaks, much of the CIA program centered on dozens of vulnerabilities it discovered but did not disclose to the gadget makers. Common practice calls for government agencies to disclose such flaws to companies privately, so that they could fix them. Instead, WikiLeaks claims, the CIA held on to the knowledge in order to conduct a variety of attacks. As a result, tech companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft have not been able to make the necessary fixes.
“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,” WikiLeaks wrote in a press release. “If the CIA can discover such vulnerabilities so can others.” WikiLeaks, the vulnerabilities were discovered by the CIA itself or obtained from other government agencies and cyberweapon contractors.
WikiLeaks also claims that the CIA worked with UK intelligence officials to turn microphones in Samsung smart TVs into listening devices. The microphones are normally there for viewers to make voice commands, such as requests for movie recommendations. If the TV is off, there is no listening being done.
But WikiLeaks claims that a CIA hack makes the target TV appear to be off when it is actually on — and listening. WikiLeaks said the audio goes to a covert CIA server rather than a party authorized by Samsung. In such cases, audio is not limited to TV commands but could include everyday conversations.