Yes. This is true. Your smartphone, your TV, your computer, your hands free in your car for your smartphone or cell phone. ONe of the things I try to do is to turn the sound off on my computer and cover the video camera with a bandaid on my laptop. This way I reduce what people can do including all governments and criminals on earth. Likely anything with a microchip including all smart appliances in a home are actually bugs listening to you or watching you make love to your wife in the bedroom or kitchen or anywhere on earth where there is any camera or microphone built in. This is just the reality of life here on earth. And even if you are out in the wilds satellites can read the date on a dime while reading your lips (through computers) so they even know exactly what you are saying there too.) This is the actual (NO PRIVACY EVER) world we all live in now. So, we are living in literally a "BRAVE NEW WORLD" getting more and more like 1984 written by George Orwell now every single day!
By the way, they don't need to hack into the phones and other stuff, they are built to retrieve things automatically. So, it is not about hacking it is built in by the government always. So, you have got to know because something is built in China like an IPhone that China and the U.S. receive ANY information they want!
Knowing this protects you. Not knowing this just demonstrates your ignorance. They say ignorance is bliss but I'm not sure ignorance is bliss anymore here on earth.
Newly
released documents by Wikileaks shows the CIA used software to hack
everyday devices. Veuer's Nick Cardona has the story. Buzz60 The
crusading website WikiLeaks …
CBS/APMarch 7, 2017, 9:43 AM
WikiLeaks posts alleged CIA trove depicting mass hacking
WASHINGTON -- WikiLeaks
published thousands of documents Tuesday described as secret files
about CIA hacking tools the government employs to break into users’
computers, mobile phones and even smart TVs.
Some companies that manufacture smart TVs include: Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung.
The
documents describe clandestine methods for bypassing or defeating
encryption, antivirus tools and other protective security features
intended to keep the private information of citizens and corporations
safe from prying eyes. U.S. government employees, including President Trump, use many of the same products and internet services purportedly compromised by the tools.
The
documents describe CIA efforts -- cooperating with friendly foreign
governments and the U.S. National Security Agency -- to subvert the
world’s most popular technology platforms.
Some of the products
affected include: Apple’s iPhones and iPads, Google’s Android phones and
Microsoft Windows operating system (desktop and laptops).
Details of WikiLeaks’ document release
Largest publication of confidential documents about the CIA
Part 1 includes 8,761 documents from CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence
Reveals direction of global hacking program
Information on agency’s malware arsenal
Claims that CIA used products like iPhones and smart TVs as covert microphones
Claims that the CIA used its Langley HQ and U.S. consulate in Frankfurt, Germany as bases for its hackers
Broad exchanges of tools and information among the CIA, NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies
CNET reports
that if the CIA could break into a phone’s operating system, it could
potentially access not just encrypted data stored there, but also
encrypted messages sent through popular services like WhatsApp, Signal
and Telegram. The approach doesn’t break the encryption, CNET reports,
but rather gives hackers the same access to messages that a regular user
would have when unlocking their phone.
WhatsApp declined to
comment while Signal parent company Open Whisper Systems didn’t
immediately respond to requests for comment. Telegram said on its
website that the problem lies with operating systems and not encrypted
messaging apps and that naming specific encrypted services is
“misleading.” WikiLeaks has a long track record of releasing top secret government documents, and experts who sifted through the material said it appeared legitimate.
The documents also include discussions about compromising some internet-connected televisions
to turn them into listening posts. One document discusses hacking
vehicle systems, indicating the CIA’s interest in hacking modern cars
with sophisticated on-board computers.
Missing from WikiLeaks’ trove are the actual hacking tools
themselves, some of which were developed by government hackers while
others were purchased from outsiders. WikiLeaks said it planned to avoid
distributing tools “until a consensus emerges” on the political nature
of the CIA’s program and how such software could be analyzed, disarmed
and published.
Tuesday’s
disclosure left anxious consumers who use the products with little
recourse, since repairing the software vulnerabilities in ways that
might block the tools’ effectiveness is the responsibility of leading
technology companies. The revelations threatened to upend confidence in
an Obama-era government program, the Vulnerability Equities Process,
under which federal agencies warn technology companies about weaknesses
in their software so they can be quickly fixed.
It was not immediately clear how WikiLeaks obtained the information, code-named “Vault7,”
and details in the documents could not immediately be verified.
WikiLeaks said the material came from “an isolated, high-security
network” inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence but didn’t say
whether the files were removed by a rogue employee or whether the theft
involved hacking a federal contractor working for the CIA or perhaps
breaking into a staging server where such information might have been
temporarily stored.
“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,” WikiLeaks said in a statement.
In a statement to CBS
News, CIA spokesman Jonathan Liu said, “We do not comment on the
authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents.” White
House spokesman Sean Spicer also declined comment.
The tools described in the documents carried bizarre names,
including Time Stomper, Fight Club, Jukebox, Bartender, Wild Turkey,
Margarita and “RickyBobby,” a racecar-driving character in the comedy
film, “Talladega Nights.”
That RickyBobby tool, the documents
said, was intended to plant and harvest files on computers running
“newer versions of Microsoft Windows and Windows Server.” It operated
“as a lightweight implant for target computers” without raising warnings
from antivirus or intrusion-detection software. It took advantage of
files Microsoft built into Windows since at least 10 years ago.
The
files include comments by CIA hackers boasting in slang language of
their prowess: “You know we got the dankest Trojans and collection
tools,” one reads.
The documents show broad exchanges of tools and
information among the CIA, NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies, as
well as intelligence services of close allies Australia, Canada, New
Zealand and the United Kingdom.
WikiLeaks claimed the CIA used
both its Langley, Virginia, headquarters and the U.S. consulate in
Frankfurt, Germany, as bases for its covert hackers. The AP found that
one purported CIA hack that imitates the Domain Name System -- the
internet’s phone book -- traced to an internet domain hosted in Germany.
Jake Williams, a security expert with Augusta, Georgia-based
Rendition Infosec who has experience dealing with government hackers,
said the files’ extensive references to operation security meant they
were almost certainly government-backed. “I can’t fathom anyone
fabricated that amount of operational security concern,” he said. “It
rings true to me.”
In an unusual move, WikiLeaks said it was
withholding some secrets inside the documents. Among them, it said it
had withheld details of tens of thousands of “CIA targets and attack
machines throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States.”
WikiLeaks
also said its data included a “substantial library” of digital
espionage techniques borrowed from other countries, including Russia.
If
the authenticity of the documents is officially confirmed, it would
represent yet another catastrophic breach for the U.S. intelligence
community at the hands of WikiLeaks and its allies, which have
repeatedly humbled Washington with the mass release of classified
material, including from the State Department and the Pentagon.
Tuesday’s documents purported to be from the CIA’s “Embedded
Development Branch” discuss techniques for injecting malicious code into
computers protected by the personal security products of leading
international anti-virus companies. They describe ways to trick
anti-virus products from companies including Russia-based Kaspersky Lab,
Romania-based BitDefender, Dutch-based AVG Technologies, F-Secure of
Finland and Rising Antivirus, a Chinese company.
In the new trove, programmers also posted instructions for how to access user names and passwords in popular internet browsers.
Those browsers include: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
Under
a list of references in one exchange, users were advised: “Be advised,
the following may be low traffic sites, sites in which it might be a
good idea to disable JavaScript, etc,” referring to a widely used
internet programming language. “Remember, practice safe browsing, kidz!”
they were told.
Some documents were classified “secret” or “top
secret” and not for distribution to foreign nationals. One file said
those classifications would protect deployed hacks from being
“attributed” to the U.S. government. The practice of attribution, or
identifying who was behind an intrusion, has been difficult for
investigators probing sophisticated hacks that likely came from powerful
nation-states.
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