Hi Guys,
Bruce Scheiner just posted a link to a great story about Joshua Schulte, the accused leaker of the WikiLeaks Vault 7 and Vault 8 C.I.A. data. It is a good read, and it gives you a rare look behind the ‘curtain.’ Did he leak all of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive information as well as information on the vast array of hacking tools available to them just because he was annoyed with his co-workers? It is a really interesting read if you have twenty minutes to spare.
Here is an excerpt:
“O.S.B. was focussed on what we referred to as ‘physical-access operations,'” a senior developer from the unit, Jeremy Weber—a pseudonym—explained. This is not dragnet mass surveillance of the kind more often associated with the National Security Agency.
These are hacks, or “exploits,” designed for individual targets. Sometimes a foreign terrorist or a finance minister is too sophisticated to be hacked remotely, and so the agency is obliged to seek “physical access” to that person’s devices. Such operations are incredibly dangerous: a C.I.A. officer or an asset recruited to work secretly for the agency—a courier for the terrorist; the finance minister’s personal chef—must surreptitiously implant the malware by hand. “It could be somebody who was willing to type on a keyboard for us,” Weber said.
“It often was somebody who was willing to plug a thumb drive into the machine.” In this manner, human spies, armed with the secret digital payloads designed by the Operations Support Branch, have been able to compromise smartphones, laptops, tablets, and even T.V.s: when Samsung developed a set that responded to voice commands, the wizards at the O.S.B. exploited a software vulnerability that turned it into a listening device. “
Here is the link to the full STORY
I wish you a fantastic rest of your day.
All the best,
Max Roberts
Incognito Privavy Care Team