‘Everyone Should be Concerned’: CIA Targets Personal Computers and Smartphones
SputnikNews.com
24.03.2017
A fresh Wikileaks document dump has exposed a CIA program aimed at hacking computers, mobile phones and even smart TVs from companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung, using techniques users could neither detect nor disable by resetting their devices – and a security expert has told Sputnik all tech lovers should be extremely concerned.
The dump, dubbed “Vault 7,” contains documents on a number of CIA projects which sought to infect Apple firmware, developed by the CIA’s Embedded Development Branch. A fortnight prior to this dump, WikiLeaks published thousands of CIA documents, which detailed attempts to spy on foreign leaders among other shocking revelations. The DarkMatter” set is far more focused, consisting of but 12 documents.
These documents expose the “Sonic Screwdriver” project, a “mechanism for executing code on peripheral devices” while a computer is booting, which would allow CIA attackers to launch hacking software via USB drives and the like even when a firmware password was enabled. “Sonic Screwdriver” was an infector stored on the modified firmware of an Apple Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter.
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