If there's no electricity going to your TV, it's really off.
Posted on 03/07/2017 1:24:58 PM PST by drewh
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".
WikiLeaks is funded by donations, it received more than $200,000 after the release of the Apache helicopter video
"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.”
My wife asked me why I carried a gun around the house all the time. I told her it was to protect against the CIA. She laughed. I laughed. The Samsung TV laughed. I shot the TV.
Good times.
Tape or paint over the video camera.
Drill through the microphone (or use a nail).
Problem: solved!
Possible for your Android list. . . Samsung TVs use Android.
Be sure to buy the google and amazon listening devices too.
Bradbury - Farenheit 451
That is one problem I don’t have. I am pretty sure they can get into my desktop any time they want, on or off, but I have no TV in the house and my mic and camera stay unplugged from the box except when I am using them which is rare.
Samsung has to be excited by this news. Like exploding batteries and the founders kid indicted for corruption weren’t enough.
It’s been assumed that this is what NSA has been up to. What’s new here is that the CIA has its own hacking directorate.
If there's no electricity going to your TV, it's really off.
They're the creepiest evil aliens EVER, from the Dr Who TV series!
Yikes!
Mark
Watch the pictures in the house as you walk by.
The eyes follow you..... : )
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