WikiLeaks announced Tuesday that it has obtained a highly confidential plenty of tools used by the CIA to break and get access to mobile applications and other electronic communications, and it has published papers on these programs, reports Reuters.
If that would be true, this information will constitute another breach in stolen classified material in recent years from US intelligence services. WikiLeaks, a specialised website in publishing secret information, conducted by Julian Assange, said that this publication of the documents about hacking tools is the first in a series of revelations coming from a data set that includes hundreds of millions of lines of code and the "full capacity piracy" of the CIA.
CIA broke WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram
These documents reveal, among other things, that the CIA, in partnership with other American and foreign intelligence agencies, was able to break the encryption of messaging applications like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram.
Reuters couldn`t immediately verify the content of the published material. "We don`t comment on the authenticity or the content of the documents", said a CIA spokesman, Jonathan Liu.
A cyber security consultant, who worked for the US government and who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the disclosure, said that the disclosure appears to be legitimate. US officials said they don`t know where WikiLeaks could obtain these CIA materials.
A government source said he is not aware of any recent or pending investigation regarding the disclosure of this type of CIA material.
WikiLeaks published secret government information in the past
WikiLeaks also announced that those documents show that the CIA operatives have studied how to commit cyber attacks and how to take control over other devices than computers and smartphones connected to the Internet.
In a case, says WikiLeaks, American and British staff from a program known as the Weeping Angel, developed ways to take control of a smart TV, which made it look off when in fact, this was recording conversations in the room.