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Former CIA spy: agency's tools can takeover your phone, TV, and even your car
- pureagave 10mo agoThis was all released many years ago in the Vault 7 drop. What's new here?
- greenavocado 10mo agoThey're reminding you that they own you.
- pureagave 10mo agoRelease thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13939422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13939422 Trial for leaker https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22226066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22226066
- bell-cot 10mo agoProbably nothing. Think of it as a PSA being re-run every X days.
- jjtheblunt 10mo agothat's like the every 6 months proposed new revelation that everyone around cats is supposedly schizophrenic from toxoplasmosis gondii, which a day or two later is debunked. then "goto 10" and the cycle starts anew.
- DANmode 10mo agoWait, when (and how) did toxoplasmosis and bartonella amongst cat owners get debunked?
- jjtheblunt 10mo agoi am glad you responded, because i just went looking anew and could not find it being debunked...and don't remember what i had seen last time around. evidently not debunked, as i just (first time in months) went re-reading CDC etc...but the punchlines i remembered from months ago include the only reservoir being cats, who clear the infections themselves, and healthy immune system humans generally have no symptoms. "Cats can only release the infectious oocytes for between one and three weeks after they become infected, after which they can no longer spread the parasites." what's interesting, and to your point, is the lack of insight as to why some people have side effects like bipolar and schizophrenia.
- DANmode 10mo agoPSA: healthy immune system humans are vastly over counted.
- jjtheblunt 10mo agoyeah: a friend and i were talking about that the other day while dog pack walking...it's sad
- Bender 10mo agoJust a reminder they can car accident anyone anywhere from anywhere and having an old car will not save anyone when a Tesla with AI enabled cloud cameras is approaching head on.
- DANmode 10mo agoYou mean for you, or the average reader saying “What’s a Vault 7 drop”?
- 47282847 10mo ago> Vault 7 is a series of documents that WikiLeaks began to publish on 7 March 2017, detailing the activities and capabilities of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare. The files, dating from 2013 to 2016, include details on the agency's software capabilities, such as the ability to compromise cars, smart TVs, web browsers including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera, the operating systems of most smartphones including Apple's iOS and Google's Android, and computer operating systems including Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux. > In July 2022, former CIA software engineer Joshua Schulte was convicted of leaking the documents to WikiLeaks, and in February 2024 sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7
- tldrthelaw 10mo ago[flagged]
- KingLancelot 10mo ago[dead]
- runjake 10mo ago1. This news site is analogous to a tabloid. They're just rehashing info from K's appearance in a LADBible video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXtDH2IXKY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXtDH2IXKY8 2. While I don't even dislike the guy, let alone hate him, Kiriakou tends to make grandiose and controversial claims that get discredited. 3. Kiriakou hasn't been privvy to CIA tech since roughly 2004. Yes, before the era of modern smartphones, all devices were pwned. He's been doing the rounds on any podcast that will take him where he elaborates on these claims further and it's pretty clear that he doesn't have decent subject matter knowledge. Can a lot of phones and TVs and cars be exploited? Yes. Keep your devices patched. And, don't do things that attract the CIA's attention enough that they're putting in the significant effort it takes to pwn your TV or car. tl;dr: If you're in a position where the CIA is targeting you, worry.
- strathmeyer 10mo ago[dead]
- micah94 10mo agoRemember...sometimes the target doesn't have a smart phone or watch much TV so those people around a target become at risk. That could be YOU. https://theintercept.com/document/hunt-sys-admins/ https://theintercept.com/document/hunt-sys-admins/
- runjake 10mo agoYes, in fact, during my days of red teaming, if I couldn't get info on an HVT (think celebrity), I'd go after their not-famous relatives[1] and friends, who generally had very bad opsec/persec. It was extremely effective. 1. An effective tactic is to friend relatives and friends on social media. From there, you either get to the HVT's data because it's set to viewable for "friend of friend" or you be patient, friend more of their friends and family and eventually friend the HVT directly, using your "connections" as social proof. A very famous celebrity family was very susceptible to this tactic. After this project, they... tidied up their social media permissions.
- whatever1 10mo agoJust buy a range rover. Nobody can operate it. Not even the mechanic who is currently looking into it, again.
- icepat 10mo agoI've also been told the key difference between a Land Rover, and a door-to-door salesman is you can close the door on the latter.
- Scoundreller 10mo agoI get the joke, but LRs/RRs had the top theft rates in Canada, for shipping overseas. Like, 4% theft rate per year nationwide. 1 in every 25 jacked in a year: https://www.equiteassociation.com/top-10-archives/top-10-most-stolen-vehicles-of-2023---ranking-by-theft-frequency---canada https://www.equiteassociation.com/top-10-archives/top-10-mos... And pushed 7% in Ontario: https://www.equiteassociation.com/top-10-archives/top-10-most-stolen-vehicles-of-2023---ranking-by-theft-frequency---ontario https://www.equiteassociation.com/top-10-archives/top-10-mos... (And not those stupid “Honda Civic is the most stolen car” publications that fail to control for popularity. When you do, Civics are middle of the pack). Of course the industry only published the frequency rates for a few years because it probably didn’t instil the fear factor that journalists failed to point out in their slop. https://www.equiteassociation.com/top-10-most-stolen-vehicles-archives https://www.equiteassociation.com/top-10-most-stolen-vehicle...
- LargoLasskhyfv 10mo agoOld Mercedes-Benz G-Class or Toyota Hilux.
- alsetmusic 10mo agoMy taxes at work.
- dennis_jeeves2 10mo agoThose tax dollars do work very hard indeed.
- OutOfHere 10mo agoThese three agencies are opposed to the public having access to appropriate cybersecurity: NSA, NIST, CIA. The goal of government should have been to boost the citizen's cybersecurity, but it is the opposite. Americans are worse off as a result.
- lrvick 10mo agoI am a security researcher and three letter agencies have talked to me more than a couple times about their interest in my work. I got a used manual transmission easy to repair vehicle with no internet, no cell phone, I only use cash IRL, and the only device I travel with is a QubesOS laptop. If the CIA wants to track me, they are going to have to work for it. I hope to waste as much of their time as possible.
- tamimio 10mo agoWell, these measures are a bit outdated. To be tracked now you don't need to access someone's personal devices. You can be tracked with flock cams, ring cams, or any other thousands of cams out there that are already recording you and logging your car and your details. That grocery store you went to yesterday? Yep, you are logged from the moment you are in the parking lot till you leave. Oh, you used paid parking a day later? Your car is logged too, same goes with bus/trains tickets. Neighbors cams or building CCTV? That too. Your home address is also logged through many ways but primarily your tax filing and driver's license. Your home internet can be logged one way or another too, at router level (think of the many exploits against that). What about your laptop hardware? Definitely it isn't open source. Plus, have you checked your hardware if it's bugged? I personally know someone who ordered a laptop and an XYZ agency bugged his laptop (man in the middle) before it was delivered. A new laptop you order online and your bank info will trigger someone to intercept it and alter it in the middle. And many more details, like, are you sure someone won't stick an AirTag somewhere in/beneath your car to track you? FBI and DEA already used modified AirTags that won't notify anyone with an iPhone around to track drug dealers precisely. What about personal connections like friends and family or work that could be a weak link? and many ways without going into further details. So while your measures might work against some random internet attack or random stalker, against a surveillance state it won't. If they want to track you, they have all the resources (technical, legal, etc.) needed to do so.
- gnatman 10mo agowell they did say >>If the CIA wants to track me, they are going to have to work for it. I hope to waste as much of their time as possible.
- jmkni 10mo agoI'd be very interested to know what this community's view on Mr Kiriakou is He shows up on Youtube a lot, and is always a great watch, but is he full of shit or what?
- nebula8804 10mo agoHe has been invited to speak at HOPE and I'd like to think there is some level of standards applied to vetting talks there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3tKmaylRrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3tKmaylRrY He does repeat the same saga of his time in Pakistan a lot (or maybe im watching too many of his talks expecting something new).
- diggyhole 10mo agoI'm a big fan.
- selkin 10mo agoHe plead to a crime, which must’ve cut him off from most government work. He seems to be on a PR tour now, I guess to try and get other work. Some people blast every connection on LinkedIn, he seems to take a different approach and guest on every testosterone fueled and non-fact checked podcast.
- phendrenad2 10mo agoThere's only one podcast that could conceivably fact-check him, and that's the official CIA podcast, and somehow I doubt very very much that they'd be interested in having him on.
- effnorwood 10mo agoMy 1971 Ford truck accepts the challenge.
- cr125rider 10mo agoWave at the Flock cameras as you drive by.
- sys32768 10mo agoI'm skeptical of some of this guy's stories. In one interview he says that after being surveilled overseas for a while by an obvious amateur, he told the station chief who then gave him the OK to kill the guy. Surely they would try evasion, counter-surveillance, or maybe even sending a team to grab the guy off the street to figure out who he is? He claims the only reason he didn't kill the guy is because for some reason he randomly decided to mention it to a general in the local intelligence service, and then suddenly the tail vanished. https://youtu.be/BXtDH2IXKY8?t=650 https://youtu.be/BXtDH2IXKY8?t=650
- baobun 10mo agoDoes not strike me as outlandish for US covert operatives. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/6/us-navy-seals-killed-north-korean-civilians-during-botched-mission-report https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/6/us-navy-seals-killed...
- chatmasta 10mo agoSome Navy SEALs infiltrating a hostile country via amphibious underwater assault, vs. an intel officer working under non-official cover out of the US embassy in Greece… not the same situation.
- esbranson 10mo agoI also want to takeover my phone, TV, and even my car.
- vivzkestrel 10mo agois this post trying to bait us? has anyone seen through the history of this guy s claims? have they been like debunked anywhere?
- notepad0x90 10mo agoI always comment when people say how TV shows make hacking look so easy, that I think they're not too far off when the "hackers" are state-sponsored. Part of the benefit of compartmentalizing things like tool/exploit-dev from ops is you get good tooling that you just point and shoot and it mostly works. With enterprise/corporate red-teaming you have to work for it a lot, update your tooling, attacks, etc... do a lot of recon. But even then, even in companies that take security seriously and pay for it too, experienced pros spend a few days and get domain-admin (or equivalent) half the time. And I'm talking about in 2025 with everyone and their mom running EDR that have only gotten better over time (in my opinion). The CIA's tools probably don't have flashy graphics, but even the ones that were leaked a while ago give a good insight into things. https://github.com/secoba/CIA-Hacking-Tools https://github.com/secoba/CIA-Hacking-Tools I can imagine an experienced operator automating things quite a bit, and when you give them a target, they'll just run a few commands, wait a some time and get a shell with lots of powerful capabilities. Matter of fact, I think they don't show enough "easy hacking" in the movies, where you take over hospitals, government agents, courts ,etc.. in a matter of minutes and start snooping around, or just wipe them out. That would feel unbelievable to movie/tv audiences so they lave it out.
- barfoure 10mo agoTop comments in this thread have a serious “my hands are registered as deadly weapons” energy to them. Nonsensical LARPing.