WikiLeaks Just Exposed the CIA for Hacking TVs, Here’s How To See If They Got Yours
Matt Agorist
TheFreeThoughtProject.com
March 11, 2017
Earlier this week, WikiLeaks released what it claims to be the largest ever release of confidential documents on the CIA. This dump is the apparent motherlode, which the transparency organization allegedly obtained from the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley. It involves a massive cache of data ranging from the years 2013-2016, and details insidious CIA hacking and spying practices — including the practice of listening to you through your TV.
This most ominous technique, profiled by WikiLeaks in Vault 7, aptly named “Weeping Angel” (a Doctor Who reference), was developed by the CIA’s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB). It is a cyber weapon that infests smart TV’s and transforms them into microphones.
As WikiLeaks reports, 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.
As Claire Bernish writes, for years, cybersecurity and technology experts, as well as privacy and rights advocates, have admonished the public to beware the convenience proffered by devices linked to the Internet of Things — described by Jacob Morgan in Fortune as “the concept of basically connecting any device with an on and off switch to the Internet (and/or to each other). This includes everything from cellphones, coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, lamps, wearable devices and almost anything else you can think of. This also applies to components of machines, for example a jet engine of an airplane or the drill of an oil rig.”
There is good news, however. You can tell if your TV is spying on you.
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