"Vault 7": CIA Hacking Tools Revealed
Press Release
Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its
new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named
"Vault 7" by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of
confidential documents on the agency.
The first full part of the series, "Year
Zero", comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security
network situated inside the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley,
Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the
lead up to the 2012 presidential election.
Recently, 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.
"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.
Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and
budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA
found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very
different type of covert, globe-spanning force — its own substantial fleet of
hackers. The agency's hacking division freed it from having to disclose its
often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in
order to draw on the NSA's hacking capacities.
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.
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.
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.
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."
Wikileaks has carefully reviewed the "Year
Zero" disclosure and published substantive CIA documentation while
avoiding the distribution of 'armed' cyberweapons until a consensus emerges on
the technical and political nature of the CIA's program and how such 'weapons'
should analyzed, disarmed and published.
Wikileaks has also decided to redact and anonymise some identifying information
in "Year Zero" for in depth analysis. These redactions include ten of
thousands of CIA targets and attack machines throughout Latin America, Europe
and the United States. While we are aware of the imperfect results of any
approach chosen, we remain committed to our publishing model and note that the
quantity of published pages in "Vault 7" part one (“Year Zero”)
already eclipses the total number of pages published over the first three years
of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks.
Analysis
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.
CIA
malware targets Windows, OSx, Linux, routers
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.
Many of these infection efforts are pulled together
by the CIA's Automated Implant Branch (AIB), which has
developed several attack systems for automated infestation and control of CIA
malware, such as "Assassin" and "Medusa".
Attacks against Internet infrastructure and
webservers are developed by the CIA's Network Devices Branch (NDB).
The CIA has developed automated multi-platform
malware attack and control systems covering Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux
and more, such as EDB's "HIVE" and the related "Cutthroat"
and "Swindle" tools, which are described in the examples section below.
CIA
'hoarded' vulnerabilities ("zero days")
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.
The U.S. government's commitment to the Vulnerabilities
Equities Process came after significant lobbying by US technology
companies, who risk losing their share of the global market over real and
perceived hidden vulnerabilities. The government stated that it would disclose
all pervasive vulnerabilities discovered after 2010 on an ongoing basis.
"Year Zero" documents show that the CIA
breached the Obama administration's commitments. Many of the vulnerabilities
used in the CIA's cyber arsenal are pervasive and some may already have been
found by rival intelligence agencies or cyber criminals.
As an example, specific CIA malware revealed in
"Year Zero" is able to penetrate, infest and control both the Android
phone and iPhone software that runs or has run presidential Twitter accounts.
The CIA attacks this software by using undisclosed security vulnerabilities
("zero days") possessed by the CIA but if the CIA can hack these
phones then so can everyone else who has obtained or discovered the
vulnerability. As long as the CIA keeps these vulnerabilities concealed from
Apple and Google (who make the phones) they will not be fixed, and the phones
will remain hackable.
The same vulnerabilities exist for the population
at large, including the U.S. Cabinet, Congress, top CEOs, system
administrators, security officers and engineers. By hiding these security flaws
from manufacturers like Apple and Google the CIA ensures that it can hack
everyone &mdsh; at the expense of leaving everyone hackable.
