I’ll give Cook a very small break. This could have been done by a factory employee completely unknown to him...............
As secretive as Apple is and as big of a focus as they claim to put on security that is no excuse.
That’s like having a culture of rape where women are raped all the time and the guy at the top saying...I didn’t know.
Wikileaks and the CIA documents are very explicit about how this is done and it is NOT at the Apple assembly plant. It's being done before the target receives the device, while in shipment.
Quoting from the Wikileaks website summary:
"Also included in this release is the manual for the CIA’s “NightSkies 1.2” a “beacon/loader/implant tool” for the Apple iPhone. Noteworthy is that NightSkies had reached 1.2 by 2008, and is expressly designed to be physically installed onto factory fresh iPhones. i.e the CIA has been infecting the iPhone supply chain of its targets since at least 2008.
While CIA assets are sometimes used to physically infect systems in the custody of a target it is likely that many CIA physical access attacks have infected the targeted organization’s supply chain including by interdicting mail orders and other shipments (opening, infecting, and resending) leaving the United States or otherwise."
There is nothing in Wikileaks about any Apple employees being involved in the compromising of the devices. US postal, FedEx, UPS, and other delivery company employees may have been compromised, but it doesn't look as if Apple employees had a hand in it.