Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
WikiLeaks released a massive trove of CIA documents yesterday that proved, yet again, that the greatest threat to the average American, or Briton, is his or her own government. According to a Telegraph analysis of the 8,761 documents published yesterday, the CIA and its British counterpart agencies MI5 and GCHQ developed scores of methods of hacking into a variety of “smart” devices, notably TVs and cell phones, for the purpose of using them for surveillance against their owners.
“One exotically named programme dubbed Weeping Angel allowed spies to gain control of the Samsung F8000 range of internet-connected televisions. It was developed in a ‘joint workshop’ held in June 2014 involving MI5 and the CIA and enabled the agencies to gain control of the TV, according to the documents,” the Telegraph reported.
“Weeping Angel,” what a name; I guess “Winston Smith’s Telescreen” would have been a bit on-the-nose, but far more apt as that’s what Weeping Angel does. According to the Telegraph’s review of the documents, MI5 developed a “fake-off” mode that made the television appear to be switched off when it was instead recording and transmitting conversations it picks up with its built-in microphone.
Smart TVs are fun, but obviously the holy grail of government surveillance would be to hack into smartphones, which is what MI5, CIA and the British government’s listening agency, GCHQ, have been working on. GCHQ has, according to the documents, developed six different methods of targeting the iOS software that runs Apple products. They’ve also targeted phones running on Android software, apparently gaining the ability to have them take pictures even when powered down.
As busy as our friends across the pond were, the CIA was even more ambitious, developing 14 applications for hacking iPhones and 24 for breaking into Android phones. Working together, the three agencies created more than 1,000 viruses and other pieces of malware aimed at granting intelligence officials control over everyday items in people’s homes. Phones are smart, TVs are getting smarter, what else is getting more “plugged in” every day? Oh, yeah. Cars! And, of course, the CIA, MI5 and GCHQ have been looking into ways to hack into the computer control systems of vehicles that access the Internet.
“’The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations,’ said WikiLeaks,” The Telegraph reported.
The leaked documents go on to suggest the CIA developed many of these software programs using “zero-day exploits” that they’ve been hoarding instead of reporting them to their respective companies so they can be fixed. A “zero-day exploit” is a security hole in a software product that the creators of the product aren’t even aware of yet; they’ve had “zero-days” to fix it. As such, knowledge of such exploitable programs is extremely valuable in the world of hacking and cybersecurity. Instead of reporting these problems to Apple and Google so that criminal hackers – or foreign cyber-intelligence agencies – don’t use them to defraud or otherwise imperil those companies’ customers, our own government is keeping these problems secret so they can be used against us at their will.
This is the part of the blog entry where I remind my dear readers (and I’m heartened to see there are more of you; keep liking and sharing!) that the aforementioned problems are the result of having a government in the first place and could thusly be avoided if we’d just outgrow the childish notion that we need one – but given today’s topic, that feels a bit redundant. Instead, I’ll leave you with a suggestion: I personally leave my smart TV unconnected to the internet and use my dumb-as-hell Xbox 360 to stream Netflix; it doesn’t have a camera or microphone because I didn’t pay extra for that particular peripheral. Because, I like to sit on my ass when I play video games, like a normal person.
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