WikiLeaks pledges to give CIA hacking code to tech firms, saying it will be ‘disarmed’
Julian Assange says anti-secrecy website is working to help plug cybersecurity gaps in iPhones, smart TVs and other devices that are exploited by US spies
WikiLeaks will release to tech firms the software code of CIA hacking tools that were designed to compromise smartphones and other products, the group’s founder said Thursday, attempting to position himself as a defender of cybersecurity and probably further antagonising the intelligence community.
“We have decided to work with” the firms, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said at a news conference, “to give them some exclusive access to the additional technical details we have so that fixes can be developed and pushed out, so that people can be secured.”
Once the patches are sent out - or, as Assange put it, “once this material is effectively disarmed by us” - WikiLeaks will release more details publicly, he said.
Assange’s remarks come two days after the anti-secrecy site published a cache of files describing secret CIA hacking techniques and tools aimed at, for instance, seizing control of iPhones and Google’s Android phones, turning some Samsung television sets into bugging devices and getting data from devices not connected to the Internet. The release stopped short of releasing the code itself.
The CIA continues to have no comment on the authenticity of the documents released, which WikiLeaks said is the first tranche of more to come. Independent experts have said the files appear to describe authentic “exploits,” or tools that hackers can use to penetrate a device, but many of them are dated and appear to have already been patched by tech firms. And researchers said they have been long aware of a number of the techniques.
US laws and policies bar the CIA from conducting electronic surveillance targeting individuals on US soil. “And CIA does not do so,” Liu said.