Posted on 03/07/2017 10:48:38 AM PST by nickcarraway
THE CIA developed a system with MI5 to turn Samsung Smart TVs into a bugging system, activated when the owner or user thought they were switched off, the Wikileaks organisation has shockingly claimed.
The sinister plan is just one of an array of surveillance, hacking, and other techniques allegedly deployed by the US Central Intelligence Service (CIA) that are revealed in documents released by the whistle blowing organisation today, it has said.
WikiLeaks today began its new series of leaks on the CIA, code-named "Vault 7", and described as "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, according to Wikileaks.
But Wikileaks says it has proof of the CIA using consumer technology such as smart phones, PCs, and even TVs to hack into personal accounts or even spy on people.
The Wikileaks statement added: "'Year Zero' introduces the scope and direction of the CIA's global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of "zero day" weaponised exploits against a wide range of US and European company products, including Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.
"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 realisation.
"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."
Wikileaks says it has been provided with portions of a CIA archive of its hacking arsenal after it "lost control of most of it".
It includes malware, viruses, trojans, weaponised "zero day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation, it said.
Wikileaks added: "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 US government hackers and contractors in an unauthorised manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive."
Wikileaks said by the end of 2016, the CIA's hacking division, which formally fell 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 "weaponised" malware.
The statement added: "Such is the scale of the CIA's undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilised 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."
WikiLeaks said a statement from its source asked "policy questions that 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," it added.
Wikileaks said: "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, said: "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 CIA has yet to publicly respond.
A CIA spokeswoman told Express.co.uk: "We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents.”
ping Samsung
Kill your TV set.
In 2007, a person I knew from a message board group hacked into my apple computer, then retold everyone in the group what I had said when I thought my computer was turned off.
I guess sticking with the old 19” Gold Star with rotary tuning dials was a smart move afterall.
I pity the poor sod who watches the spy-stream from our TV.
More seriously, this has to be a “wake by LAN” feature put into the TV, and it would be a “silent wake” which would enable use of the camera/mic without any obvious signaling thru normal TV indicators that the TV was on.
I never thought of any good reason for a wake by LAN feature before. I suppose you could use a wifi enabled wake by LAN feature for controlling the TV from your phone, though.
Wasn’t Vizio just fined a huge sum for their TVs ‘eavesdropping ‘ and reporting their customers’ viewing habits to advertisers?..............
Mr. niteowl77
I hope they like watching me doze off watching “gunsmoke” re-runs.
Smart TV company Vizio was fined $2.2 million for tracking what customers watched without permission: Feb 02, 2017
..which is why I purchased a NOT SMART TV! I like my STUPID TV!
Hooo boy.
Time to sell your Samsung stock!
Well, there goes Samsung’s business. We have a total of three of them. Now I’ve got to try and figure out, short of just unplugging them when they are not in use, how to deactivate their listening capability. Samsung will never offer a fix because the CIA would crap all over them if they did. Just what has our country become? And what about the people in these agencies who see nothing unconstitutional about what they are doing?
All 3 of them are ‘smart’ TV’s?
“Wasn’t Vizio just fined a huge sum for their TVs ‘eavesdropping ‘ and reporting their customers’ viewing habits to advertisers?..............”
Yes they were.
We have a fairly new Vizio and for about 2 months before the announcement of the lawsuit, when we turned on our tv we would get this weird announcement on the tv screen.
Basically demanding that we agree to them monitoring what we watched. The announcement took up the whole screen.
It took a minute or two to get off that screen to stream or watch something from Comcast.
That weird announcement stopped coming on when the law suit amount was publized.
We never okayed what they wanted. I had to over power that screen with my Comcast remote not my Vizio remote.
“Smart” devices can suck my #####
i dont need an echo dot to order a pizza for me.
i can get up and change the thermostat
and i mainly watch movies on my laptop and almost no TV
sheeple never learn
How far can we limp along if every individual is a potential disloyal hacker? Is the US brand just discontinued?
I don’t watch TV and the wife watches cooking shows and those fake Alaskan frontier shows to see the scenery.
The watchers will die of boredom.
We have three Samsung “Smart” TV’s too..always on wifi but I never talk to it..the only apps Ive ever used on it is fandangotv and wwe network
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