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After the initial Vault 7 release, and even after Snowden in 2013, this is barely news. Our devices are not secure. Apple portrayed itself as a guardian angel

After the initial Vault 7 release, and even after Snowden in 2013, this is barely news. Our devices are not secure. Apple portrayed itself as a guardian angel for keeping the FBI of our devices for the past two years, while conveniently forgetting to mention that it has been installing iPhone backdoors for the CIA since 2008. edit: I misread the release, it is possible that they are installed after the fact, and apple is not complicit The fact that to most of us this isn't "news" suggests there is a very deep and intangible flaw in our society. For the people paying attention, government hacking is the number one flaw in our democracy. It suggests that we aren't in a democracy at all. Right now I am sitting in a classroom with 63 other students. Half of them are "taking notes" on their laptops while the other half are using a notebook or sleeping. Each student has a cell phone, each cell phone has a microphone and two cameras. In this room there are 63 microphones, 126 cameras, and approximately 30 open laptops, each with their own camera and microphone. The CIA is collecting data from these devices as I am writing this. But it is hard to find anyone that actually cares. The narrative that is being pushed by traditional media and social media is that this is standard. Just ordinary national security. To keep us safe. Don't pay attention to wikileaks. They are a threat. This three letter agency is much different from that three letter agency, so that three letter government agency can't do this, but this three letter agency can. Also, Russia.

Chaebixi 10y ago
>> 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. > Apple portrayed itself as a guardian angel for keeping the FBI of our devices for the past two years, while conveniently forgetting to mention that it has been installing iPhone backdoors for the CIA since 2008 [emphasis mine]. I think that's a misreading. The article only mentions "factory fresh" iPhones, which probably means ones that have not yet been unboxed, not necessarily ones still in the factory. IIRC, the NSA was intercepting packages in transit to install implants, and I'd imagine the CIA followed a similar process. So they had the cooperation of the shipping companies (e.g. USPS or UPS), not the manufactures like Apple or Dell. I mean, it might be possible that manufactures were working with them as well (or perhaps just individual employees), but I haven't seen the evidence. Keeping some distance from the manufacturer would make some sense, if they wanted to keep the vulnerabilities secret.
- sanityUnbounded 10y ago
  Yes you are right. My mistake, although I'd be very interested for wikileaks to reveal which shipping companies are complicit, whether it be USPS, UPS, or the packages are intercepted in China before they even reach the states.
  - Chaebixi 10y ago
    Now that I think of it, it might not even be the shippers doing the diversion, but Customs and Boarder Patrol: http://www.joc.com/regulation-policy/customs-regulations/us-customs-regulations/random-us-customs-inspections-frustrate-shippers_20130426.html http://www.joc.com/regulation-policy/customs-regulations/us-...: > Tarek Morsi can almost set his calendar by the notices he gets from Customs when the agency selects a couple of his export containers for what it calls random inspections of their contents. > HTS [Morsi's company] itself can’t perform the unpacking and repacking of its customers’ containers for inspections, because Customs picks the bonded warehouses it uses for its Customs Examination Stations. > Another Los Angeles broker who asked not to be identified said Customs has confirmed to him that it is targeting export containers containing household goods, computers and peripherals, and used vehicles. “They are looking for illegal arms exports,” he said. Customs also may be targeting containers bound for Africa and the Middle East;
berntb 10y ago
Frankly, I trust the US government more than my local ones, to have this information. What I don't trust is the neutrality regarding company sensitive information and competitors. (I still trust the US government more than I would trust most any other than that, but still not much.)
jerf 10y ago
"barely news...." "hard to find anyone that actually cares...." What Wikileaks is changing, and what has had a real effect even here on HN let alone out in the normal world, is that we didn't quite know that the government was doing all these things. We very very very much expected that they were doing these things, but we were never faced with cold hard evidence. And a great deal of the rest of the populace sort of vaguely expected that the government was collecting stuff, but when faced with concrete evidence of this fact, it became real. Even those who strongly suspected only suspected in very vague terms, but now we have details, which is qualitatively different. If you want people to care, it seems you need this concrete evidence, not just very well-sourced supposition. I say "it seems" because I am not theorizing about this; I am observing the reality on the ground. It doesn't matter how true it may be theoretically that we shouldn't have needed this information, how we should have theoretically had all the info we needed to care, because I observe that we in fact we didn't have enough information to care, because largely, we didn't. If you want to counter that, please provide me with the observations that I'm wrong and people had enough to care, not just theory. (Though that will require you to contradict your own point that people don't care.) I suggest to you that you meditate on where you got the idea that Wikileaks is a "threat" for releasing this information, which seems like it ought to help you towards your goal of getting people to care about these things, but which somehow you've talked yourself into trying to downplay and ignore. Who's the source of that idea, and who's pushing it? Are you sure you want to absorb the idea from those sources? You don't have to "like" Wikileaks to use this information, nor do you have to trust their motives beyond ensuring that the provenance of the files are correct. I do suggest keeping in mind that they may still be filtering the flow (they are certainly modulating it, as they themselves say, so this is no accusation or anything), but you can still do correct logic on the information that is provided (assuming it is accurate). You just shouldn't do any logic based on what is missing. (However, I can't say I'm seeing very many people making that mistake.)
- 3131s 10y ago
  GP is lamenting the fact that this is "barely news" and the bit about Wikileaks being a threat was sarcasm.
  - deleted 10y ago
sigmar 10y ago
>it has been installing iPhone backdoors for the CIA since 2008. [Citation needed] Also a bit interesting that this account was created the same minute that this comment was posted.
- ominous 10y ago
  And this one was aged for a while before showing up. What is your point?
SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
> The CIA is collecting data from these devices as I am writing this. Citation needed. The CIA is almost certainly ignoring all of that data. [Ed: Since this was unclear, by "ignoring", I meant not interested in and not capturing it. As in, they're "ignoring" the information stream by not tapping it.] If anyone is collecting it, which is largely doubtful, it would be Facebook collecting microphone noise or Google collecting location data (or other apps doing similarly). Of course, people have volunteered that data themselves, and you should be annoyed at your classmates for recording you. The CIA (and other letter boys) can gain access to the data stored by these commercial companies after the fact, as part of their chartered duties. You have some kind of voyeuristic fantasy that just because spy tools exist at a spy agency, they're somehow -- ZOMG! muh democracy! -- breaking their charter in a massive way by domestically spying on a bunch of students sitting around in class. No. That's paranoid fantasy. There are real issues with the CIA, but that they own computer spy tools (and your fantasy of being watched hundreds of times right now) isn't one of them.
- 3131s 10y ago
  > breaking their charter in a massive way by domestically spying on a bunch of students sitting around in class. You are aware that the CIA has done exactly that already, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_RESISTANCE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_RESISTANCE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    Uh, that second link isn't like the first. Foreign PSYOPs exploiting local minority (or other) groups is a standard way to undermine a government. It's a tactic at least thousands of years old. I would say it's literally the CIAs job to keep an eye on that kind of activity. Circling back to your first link, which is an issue, Im still not 100% convinced they acted inappropriately. You notice how it says they compiled a database of people who might cause property damage using the opinions of independent people on the ground, and not thay they put bugs in random student's dorm rooms? That, given its relation to the appropriate tracking of foreign influence, might've been okay. In either case, neither of your links is anything like the allegation they're massively and indiscriminately spying on random students. So... Citation needed.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
NietTim 10y ago
Are you kidding me? Wikileaks is giving is proof against conspiracy nuts that we have never had before. Just because people in your bubble don't care, doesn't mean that this isn't effective. Releases like this spark discussion and give people fuel to fight the fire. Can I get a source on this? > while conveniently forgetting to mention that it has been installing iPhone backdoors for the CIA since 2008. I'm more inclined to believe a company then someone who clearly has a nack against Wikileaks.
- imron 10y ago
  > who clearly has a nack against Wikileaks. Maybe not as clearly as you think. The 'wikileaks is a threat' was part of the false narrative that the parent post says is being presented to the masses.
- pikzen 10y ago
  I believe his post was awkwardly worded and that "Don't believe Wikileaks, they are a threat" is just a jab at how the media is portraying Assange and Wikileaks.
  - sanityUnbounded 10y ago
    Yes, maybe I could have written that better. My attention is stuck between wikileaks and my professor talking about binary trees. Typical 21st century bs.
aestetix 10y ago
I partly agree with you. I think that some of this technology is intrusive, and that there isn't nearly enough transparency around what the "intelligence" agencies do. That said, I'd like to see a lot more attention to data brokers like Axciom, Transunion, and Equifax. While having an enemy like the NSA is sharp and simple to understand, having loan applications and other things mysteriously denied is far more menacing to me. That and the fact that unlike the intelligence agencies, there is almost no data privacy protection for people around data brokers.
- tgragnato 10y ago
  The current state of affairs led me to believe that there's no big difference between data brokers and intelligence agencies from a citizen/sw_user perspective: they use shading techniques to extort and intercept data about people, from people, giving them to other people, for unclear and/or deplorable aims. Terrorism and marketing are two reasons looking for a question, the reality is that who's doing this wants the power that comes with knowledge, and there's absolutely no difference between an intelligence agency and a data broker in this.
rfrank 10y ago
Before leaks, "Thinking the government is monitoring everyone online and using their mobile devices to spy on them is insane, you conspiracy theorist." After leaks, "This is barely news, everyone knew this already." Every. Single. Time.
- jaredhansen 10y ago
  Yes, but that's not as crazy as it sounds. I think many folks draw an (implicit, often subconscious) distinction between invasions of privacy that they care about, vs those they don't, and the former ties closely to the presence of a human mind on the other end of the wire. For most people it seems, the whole concept is linked much more closely to the fear of shame (e.g., your slightly bizarre kink will be outed to friends or family who might look at you differently) than to the fear that the regime will find out you are a threat to it, and will come after you. In other words: because the CIA's computers don't care if I am a furry and are never going to tell what they hear, I don't have to care that they're listening. People (rightfully) dismiss as insane the notion that some weird dude is sitting in the basement of the NSA listening to the details of your life, in particular (the NSA's basement and budget are not big enough to house enough weird dudes to listen to make the chance of your life being monitored any more than vanishingly small). But it's been pretty common knowledge for a very long time that if Power really wants to know something (whether it's about you or anything else), it has a pretty good chance of learning it.
  - rfrank 10y ago
    > ...and are never going to tell what they hear, I don't have to care that they're listening. Why do you think this is the case? Has the government sufficient ability to secure data that the very fact they possess databases of information on US citizens isn't fundamentally problematic? Based on only the last year of breaches, I'd argue no. > People (rightfully) dismiss as insane the notion that some weird dude is sitting in the basement of the NSA listening to the details of your life That is not a claim that any rational critic of bulk surveillance makes. And, ya know, machine learning exists. They won't (or don't) need humans to analyze the data they collect. > ...the whole concept is linked much more closely to the fear of shame... Embedded journalists, activists, people with sensitive medical information.
baq 10y ago
just a note: the fact that wikileaks is most likely putin's work doesn't make it less valuable; it's just that you'll never see anything about russia of relevance, and if you do, it's probably fake. you can be quite sure that leaks from the west are pristine.
- anonbanker 10y ago
  Can you provide an example of Wikileaks reporting something that was fake?
emilga 10y ago
> In this room there are 63 microphones, 126 cameras, and approximately 30 open laptops, each with their own camera and microphone. Would it not be possible to also use the loud-speakers as microphones?

Chaebixi 10y ago

>> 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. > Apple portrayed itself as a guardian angel for keeping the FBI of our devices for the past two years, while conveniently forgetting to mention that it has been installing iPhone backdoors for the CIA since 2008 [emphasis mine]. I think that's a misreading. The article only mentions "factory fresh" iPhones, which probably means ones that have not yet been unboxed, not necessarily ones still in the factory. IIRC, the NSA was intercepting packages in transit to install implants, and I'd imagine the CIA followed a similar process. So they had the cooperation of the shipping companies (e.g. USPS or UPS), not the manufactures like Apple or Dell. I mean, it might be possible that manufactures were working with them as well (or perhaps just individual employees), but I haven't seen the evidence. Keeping some distance from the manufacturer would make some sense, if they wanted to keep the vulnerabilities secret.

sanityUnbounded 10y ago
Yes you are right. My mistake, although I'd be very interested for wikileaks to reveal which shipping companies are complicit, whether it be USPS, UPS, or the packages are intercepted in China before they even reach the states.
- Chaebixi 10y ago
  Now that I think of it, it might not even be the shippers doing the diversion, but Customs and Boarder Patrol: http://www.joc.com/regulation-policy/customs-regulations/us-customs-regulations/random-us-customs-inspections-frustrate-shippers_20130426.html http://www.joc.com/regulation-policy/customs-regulations/us-...: > Tarek Morsi can almost set his calendar by the notices he gets from Customs when the agency selects a couple of his export containers for what it calls random inspections of their contents. > HTS [Morsi's company] itself can’t perform the unpacking and repacking of its customers’ containers for inspections, because Customs picks the bonded warehouses it uses for its Customs Examination Stations. > Another Los Angeles broker who asked not to be identified said Customs has confirmed to him that it is targeting export containers containing household goods, computers and peripherals, and used vehicles. “They are looking for illegal arms exports,” he said. Customs also may be targeting containers bound for Africa and the Middle East;

berntb 10y ago

Frankly, I trust the US government more than my local ones, to have this information. What I don't trust is the neutrality regarding company sensitive information and competitors. (I still trust the US government more than I would trust most any other than that, but still not much.)

jerf 10y ago

"barely news...." "hard to find anyone that actually cares...." What Wikileaks is changing, and what has had a real effect even here on HN let alone out in the normal world, is that we didn't quite know that the government was doing all these things. We very very very much expected that they were doing these things, but we were never faced with cold hard evidence. And a great deal of the rest of the populace sort of vaguely expected that the government was collecting stuff, but when faced with concrete evidence of this fact, it became real. Even those who strongly suspected only suspected in very vague terms, but now we have details, which is qualitatively different. If you want people to care, it seems you need this concrete evidence, not just very well-sourced supposition. I say "it seems" because I am not theorizing about this; I am observing the reality on the ground. It doesn't matter how true it may be theoretically that we shouldn't have needed this information, how we should have theoretically had all the info we needed to care, because I observe that we in fact we didn't have enough information to care, because largely, we didn't. If you want to counter that, please provide me with the observations that I'm wrong and people had enough to care, not just theory. (Though that will require you to contradict your own point that people don't care.) I suggest to you that you meditate on where you got the idea that Wikileaks is a "threat" for releasing this information, which seems like it ought to help you towards your goal of getting people to care about these things, but which somehow you've talked yourself into trying to downplay and ignore. Who's the source of that idea, and who's pushing it? Are you sure you want to absorb the idea from those sources? You don't have to "like" Wikileaks to use this information, nor do you have to trust their motives beyond ensuring that the provenance of the files are correct. I do suggest keeping in mind that they may still be filtering the flow (they are certainly modulating it, as they themselves say, so this is no accusation or anything), but you can still do correct logic on the information that is provided (assuming it is accurate). You just shouldn't do any logic based on what is missing. (However, I can't say I'm seeing very many people making that mistake.)

3131s 10y ago
GP is lamenting the fact that this is "barely news" and the bit about Wikileaks being a threat was sarcasm.
- deleted 10y ago

sigmar 10y ago

>it has been installing iPhone backdoors for the CIA since 2008. [Citation needed] Also a bit interesting that this account was created the same minute that this comment was posted.

ominous 10y ago
And this one was aged for a while before showing up. What is your point?

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago

> The CIA is collecting data from these devices as I am writing this. Citation needed. The CIA is almost certainly ignoring all of that data. [Ed: Since this was unclear, by "ignoring", I meant not interested in and not capturing it. As in, they're "ignoring" the information stream by not tapping it.] If anyone is collecting it, which is largely doubtful, it would be Facebook collecting microphone noise or Google collecting location data (or other apps doing similarly). Of course, people have volunteered that data themselves, and you should be annoyed at your classmates for recording you. The CIA (and other letter boys) can gain access to the data stored by these commercial companies after the fact, as part of their chartered duties. You have some kind of voyeuristic fantasy that just because spy tools exist at a spy agency, they're somehow -- ZOMG! muh democracy! -- breaking their charter in a massive way by domestically spying on a bunch of students sitting around in class. No. That's paranoid fantasy. There are real issues with the CIA, but that they own computer spy tools (and your fantasy of being watched hundreds of times right now) isn't one of them.

3131s 10y ago
> breaking their charter in a massive way by domestically spying on a bunch of students sitting around in class. You are aware that the CIA has done exactly that already, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_RESISTANCE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_RESISTANCE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  Uh, that second link isn't like the first. Foreign PSYOPs exploiting local minority (or other) groups is a standard way to undermine a government. It's a tactic at least thousands of years old. I would say it's literally the CIAs job to keep an eye on that kind of activity. Circling back to your first link, which is an issue, Im still not 100% convinced they acted inappropriately. You notice how it says they compiled a database of people who might cause property damage using the opinions of independent people on the ground, and not thay they put bugs in random student's dorm rooms? That, given its relation to the appropriate tracking of foreign influence, might've been okay. In either case, neither of your links is anything like the allegation they're massively and indiscriminately spying on random students. So... Citation needed.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

NietTim 10y ago

Are you kidding me? Wikileaks is giving is proof against conspiracy nuts that we have never had before. Just because people in your bubble don't care, doesn't mean that this isn't effective. Releases like this spark discussion and give people fuel to fight the fire. Can I get a source on this? > while conveniently forgetting to mention that it has been installing iPhone backdoors for the CIA since 2008. I'm more inclined to believe a company then someone who clearly has a nack against Wikileaks.

imron 10y ago
> who clearly has a nack against Wikileaks. Maybe not as clearly as you think. The 'wikileaks is a threat' was part of the false narrative that the parent post says is being presented to the masses.
pikzen 10y ago
I believe his post was awkwardly worded and that "Don't believe Wikileaks, they are a threat" is just a jab at how the media is portraying Assange and Wikileaks.
- sanityUnbounded 10y ago
  Yes, maybe I could have written that better. My attention is stuck between wikileaks and my professor talking about binary trees. Typical 21st century bs.

aestetix 10y ago

I partly agree with you. I think that some of this technology is intrusive, and that there isn't nearly enough transparency around what the "intelligence" agencies do. That said, I'd like to see a lot more attention to data brokers like Axciom, Transunion, and Equifax. While having an enemy like the NSA is sharp and simple to understand, having loan applications and other things mysteriously denied is far more menacing to me. That and the fact that unlike the intelligence agencies, there is almost no data privacy protection for people around data brokers.

tgragnato 10y ago
The current state of affairs led me to believe that there's no big difference between data brokers and intelligence agencies from a citizen/sw_user perspective: they use shading techniques to extort and intercept data about people, from people, giving them to other people, for unclear and/or deplorable aims. Terrorism and marketing are two reasons looking for a question, the reality is that who's doing this wants the power that comes with knowledge, and there's absolutely no difference between an intelligence agency and a data broker in this.

rfrank 10y ago

Before leaks, "Thinking the government is monitoring everyone online and using their mobile devices to spy on them is insane, you conspiracy theorist." After leaks, "This is barely news, everyone knew this already." Every. Single. Time.

jaredhansen 10y ago
Yes, but that's not as crazy as it sounds. I think many folks draw an (implicit, often subconscious) distinction between invasions of privacy that they care about, vs those they don't, and the former ties closely to the presence of a human mind on the other end of the wire. For most people it seems, the whole concept is linked much more closely to the fear of shame (e.g., your slightly bizarre kink will be outed to friends or family who might look at you differently) than to the fear that the regime will find out you are a threat to it, and will come after you. In other words: because the CIA's computers don't care if I am a furry and are never going to tell what they hear, I don't have to care that they're listening. People (rightfully) dismiss as insane the notion that some weird dude is sitting in the basement of the NSA listening to the details of your life, in particular (the NSA's basement and budget are not big enough to house enough weird dudes to listen to make the chance of your life being monitored any more than vanishingly small). But it's been pretty common knowledge for a very long time that if Power really wants to know something (whether it's about you or anything else), it has a pretty good chance of learning it.
- rfrank 10y ago
  > ...and are never going to tell what they hear, I don't have to care that they're listening. Why do you think this is the case? Has the government sufficient ability to secure data that the very fact they possess databases of information on US citizens isn't fundamentally problematic? Based on only the last year of breaches, I'd argue no. > People (rightfully) dismiss as insane the notion that some weird dude is sitting in the basement of the NSA listening to the details of your life That is not a claim that any rational critic of bulk surveillance makes. And, ya know, machine learning exists. They won't (or don't) need humans to analyze the data they collect. > ...the whole concept is linked much more closely to the fear of shame... Embedded journalists, activists, people with sensitive medical information.

baq 10y ago

just a note: the fact that wikileaks is most likely putin's work doesn't make it less valuable; it's just that you'll never see anything about russia of relevance, and if you do, it's probably fake. you can be quite sure that leaks from the west are pristine.

anonbanker 10y ago
Can you provide an example of Wikileaks reporting something that was fake?

emilga 10y ago

> In this room there are 63 microphones, 126 cameras, and approximately 30 open laptops, each with their own camera and microphone. Would it not be possible to also use the loud-speakers as microphones?