Wikileaks released 8761 documents on the spying activity of the CIA: under attack iPhones, Android smartphones and smart TVs
That Internet of Things objects were few safe was known, but now the news is also confirmed by Wikileaks, the international organization risen to the honor of the chronicles for having revealed in the past years confidential information on the spying plans of the United States.
The organization has released 8761 files that document in detail the spying activities of the CIA, the US intelligence organization. As the files made available by Wikileaks show, the CIA would have put under control the smartphones, tablets and smart televisions of people suspected of terrorism, but not only, using security holes in the devices and tampering them with malware developed directly by its own computer research center. Wikileaks said that the 8761 documents are just the tip of the iceberg and the CIA's action would be more far-reaching.
Internet of Things objects under attack
Wikileaks managed to get hold of the data following a leak that saw the CIA's entire database of malware, viruses and trojans pass through the hands of US government men and international hackers. Thanks to a source who wanted to release the data to open an international debate on the role that cyber-weapons may have in the coming years. It is often not realized that malware will be used as "weapons of mass destruction". Thanks to the documents released by the international organization, it is possible to affirm that the devices connected to the Net, at the moment, are still not safe. On the contrary, they can be hacked with great ease. The CIA in its espionage plans targeted the smart TVs of a major company and hacked them with a malware that allowed agents to capture people's speech directly through the smart TVs. The CIA's program to use smart TVs is called Weeping Angel and was developed by the Embedded Development Branch unit in conjunction with British intelligence. Il malware creato dalla CIA, però, ha creato diversi problemi all’agenzia statunitense e più volte è stato perfezionato: all’inizio, nonostante il televisore fosse spento, restava acceso un LED blu sul retro del dispositivo, segno che qualcosa non funzionasse nel verso giusto. Dai documenti emerge che la CIA stesse pensando al futuro cercando un modo di registrare le immagini direttamente dai televisori intelligenti. Se ci sia riuscita o meno non è dato sapere.
Fonte foto: Shutterstock
Premi sull’immagine per scoprire se il vostro televisore vi sta spiando
Hacking Team
L’Hacking Team è la società di cybersecurity italiana che qualche anno fa subì un pesante attacco hacker, con i pirati informatici che rilasciarono alcuni documenti nel dark web. From Wikileaks' information it emerges that the CIA took an interest in the case and analyzed all the data that ended up on the Net to see if there was anything dangerous.
iPhone and Android
Smart TVs are not the only target of the CIA: the US agency has also put under control iPhones and Android smartphones, managing to penetrate even the defenses of ultra-secure applications such as Signal, the instant messaging app used by Snowden himself. From the documents it emerges that the Weeping Angel program was flanked by other CIA-funded projects that made it possible to tamper with other devices. Nowy Owl, Maddening Whispers, Gyrfalcon, Pterodactyl are some of the names of the programs of the US Agency.
Future in danger
Wikileaks did not want to spread other information that directly concerned the functioning of the tools used by the CIA: if they ended up in the wrong hands something tragic could happen. In fact, the main objective of the source that provided the documents to the international organization is to create an international debate that allows nations to engage in a serious discourse for the protection of objects connected to the Net. The future is the Internet of Things, but it is necessary that users do not live in fear of being spied on. Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, warns against these weapons: "There is a huge risk of proliferation related to the development of cyber weapons. La diffusione incontrollata di questi strumenti, che scaturisce dalla difficoltà di arginarle e contemporaneamente dal loro grande valore di mercato, è paragonabile al commercio internazionale di armamenti”.
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Cliccando sui link che seguono, invece, potrete scoprire suggerimenti, alcuni più tecnici altri più alla portata di tutti, riguardanti la sicurezza informatica e scoprire le tipologie di attacchi più comuni: dagli attacchi DDoS al phishing, passando per le botnet.
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