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WikiLeaks Publishes CIA Hacking Tool Designed To “Impersonate” Russia’s Kaspersky Lab

WikiLeaks Publishes CIA Hacking Tool Designed To “Impersonate” Russia’s Kaspersky Lab

On September 18th, the US Senate voted to ban the use of products from the Moscow-based cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab by the federal government, citing national security risk. The vote was included as an amendment to an annual defense policy spending bill approved by the Senate on the same day and was written to bar the use of Kaspersky Lab software in government civilian and military agencies.

Alas, according to a new revelation from WikiLeaks this morning, any perceived “national security risk” from Kaspersky could have resulted from the fact that the CIA specifically designed hacking software, code-named ‘Hive’, which intentionally “impersonated” the Russian cyber security firm so that “if the target organization looks at the network traffic coming out of its network, it is likely to misattribute the CIA exfiltration of data to uninvolved entities whose identities have been impersonated.”

Here’s a summary of the hacking tool posted by WikiLeaks:

Today, 9 November 2017, WikiLeaks publishes the source code and development logs to Hive, a major component of the CIA infrastructure to control its malware.

Hive solves a critical problem for the malware operators at the CIA. Even the most sophisticated malware implant on a target computer is useless if there is no way for it to communicate with its operators in a secure manner that does not draw attention. Using Hive even if an implant is discovered on a target computer, attributing it to the CIA is difficult by just looking at the communication of the malware with other servers on the internet. Hive provides a covert communications platform for a whole range of CIA malware to send exfiltrated information to CIA servers and to receive new instructions from operators at the CIA.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Clinton, Assange and the War on Truth

Clinton, Assange and the War on Truth

Australia’s public broadcasting network gave Hillary Clinton an open mike to defame WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange as “a tool of Russian intelligence” without giving him a chance to respond, as John Pilger describes.


On Oct. 16, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation aired an interview with Hillary Clinton: one of many to promote her score-settling book about why she was not elected President of the United States.

Hillary Clinton at the Code 2017 conference on May 31, 2017.

Wading through the Clinton book, What Happened, is an unpleasant experience, like a stomach upset. Smears and tears. Threats and enemies. “They” (voters) were brainwashed and herded against her by the odious Donald Trump in cahoots with sinister Slavs sent from the great darkness known as Russia, assisted by an Australian “nihilist,” Julian Assange.

In The New York Times, there was a striking photograph of a female reporter consoling Clinton, having just interviewed her. The lost leader was, above all, “absolutely a feminist.” The thousands of women’s lives this “feminist” destroyed while in government — Libya, Syria, Honduras — were of no interest.

In New York magazine, Rebecca Trainster wrote that Clinton was finally “expressing some righteous anger.” It was even hard for her to smile: “so hard that the muscles in her face ache.” Surely, she concluded, “if we allowed women’s resentments the same bearing we allow men’s grudges, America would be forced to reckon with the fact that all these angry women might just have a point.”

Drivel such as this, trivializing women’s struggles, marks the media hagiographies of Hillary Clinton. Her political extremism and warmongering are of no consequence. Her problem, wrote Trainster, was a “damaging infatuation with the email story.” The truth, in other words.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wikileaks Publishes “Spy Files Russia” Detailing Russia’s Mas

Wikileaks Publishes “Spy Files Russia” Detailing Russia’s Mass Surveillance System

Perhaps in an attempt to refute recurring allegations that it has traditionally focused on exposing only US state secrets, if not being an outright covert and subversive Moscow front, today Wikileaks released a new cache of documents which it claims detail surveillance apparatus used by the Russian state to spy on Internet and mobile users. It’s the first time the organization has leaked material directly pertaining to the Russian state.

RELEASE: Spy Files https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/ 


The full datadump can be found here.

In its summary of the cache of mostly Russian-language documents, Wikileaks claims they show how a long-established Russian company which supplies software to telcos is also installing infrastructure – with the government’s blessing – that enables Russian state agencies to tap into, search and spy on citizens’ digital activity, suggesting a similar state-funded mass surveillance program to the one utilized by the U.S.’s NSA or by GCHQ in the U.K. (both of which were detailed in the 2013 Snowden disclosures).

And speaking of, shortly following the publication, another famous whistleblower, one also exiled and currently residing in Russia, Edward Snowden tweeted “Plot twist: @Wikileaks publishes details on Russia’s increasingly oppressive internet surveillance industry.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Harvard University Bends the Knee to the CIA

Harvard University Bends the Knee to the CIA

Let’s get caught up real quick. On Wednesday, Harvard University announced that Chelsea Manning — who leaked evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq to Wikileaks and was incarcerated for seven years before being pardoned by Barack Obama — had been named a visiting fellow. I disagree with almost everything Obama did as president, but his pardoning of Manning is something I applaud. Then the CIA complained.

The complaint was swift and two-pronged. First, former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell, wrote a letter by which he resigned in protest. Then the current CIA director, Michael Pompeo wrote a note of his own, which included support for Morell. Morell’s letter is absolutely incredible if you know some of this guy’s history. I suggest reading the entire thing.

Towards the end of the letter, Morell has the nerve to write:

“I have an obligation to my conscience — and I believe to the country — to stand up against any efforts to justify leaks of sensitive national security information.”

Let’s now take a moment to review this man’s well documented conscience.

Nice cufflinks by the way.

Remarkably, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Michael Morell. Let’s review some highlights from something I posted back in January.

Didn’t Trump’s own lawyer, Michael Cohen, meet in Prague with a Kremlin agent in August 2016? And isn’t this final proof of the ongoing secret liaisons between the tycoon and the tyrant? ‘​Fraid not. But it is déjà vu. Fifteen years ago, Morell vetted and took to the White House, a preliminary report that 9/11 hijacker, Mohamed Atta, met with an Iraqi intelligence officer, Ahmad Samir, Al-Ani at the Iraqi embassy in Prague on April 9, 2001. Both reports have turned out to be bogus.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bill in Congress to Fund CIA & NSA Outlaws Wikileaks

Bill in Congress to Fund CIA & NSA Outlaws Wikileaks

Bill in Congress to Fund CIA & NSA Outlaws Wikileaks

The bill in Congress to fund US intelligence services includes a provision, Sec. 623, which states:

SEC. 623. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON WIKILEAKS.

It is the sense of Congress that WikiLeaks and the senior leadership of WikiLeaks resemble a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such a service by the United States.

In other words: if this bill passes, Wikileaks will be categorized by US Intelligence in the same way as will the intelligence services of Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and other countries that the US Government wants to conquer. (Whereas the Cold War ended in 1991 on the Russian side, it secretly has continued on the American side.) Cooperation with Wikileaks would then be treated by the US Government as treachery, the same as cooperation with Soviet intelligence was treated when the Republican Joseph R. McCarthy (backed by the Democratic Party’s Kennedy family) held sway over the US Senate, from 9 February 1950 to 9 March 1954. Though this was the situation during the Cold War (prior to its having been ended by Russia in 1991), the time when there existed an authentic ideological reason for the US Establishment’s opposition to the Soviet Union’s ruling Establishment (and when there existed not only the ongoing thirst for conquest of the entire world by the US aristocracy), America’s Establishment (the aristocracy and its agents) is trying to restore that hostility now, 26 years after 1991, which was the year when the Soviet Union broke up, and after which, only Russia remained, and when communism had ended, and when the Soviet Union’s military alliance with the Soviet Union’s surrounding nations, the Warsaw Pact (mirroring America’s NATO), also ended — all of that happening in 1991.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Taking Aim at Wikileaks

Taking Aim at Wikileaks

Various scribbles have started to pepper the conversation started by the adventurous Mike Pompeo after he branded WikiLeaks a hostile intelligence agency before the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  (This would have generated a wry smile of content from Julian Assange.)

The words of the Central Intelligence Agency chief are worth retelling in their mind distorting wonder: “It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia.”[1]

Individuals like Assange and Edward Snowden receive the necessary special treatment as history’s great turncoats: “As long as they make a splash, they care nothing about the lives they put at risk or the damage they cause to national security.” Celebrity disrupters, dangerous irritants, narcissists in pursuit of personal glory.

This wretchedly desperate sentiment – for its nothing else – has wound its way into Congressional ponderings.  Prior to the August District Work Period, the Senate Intelligence Committee took up Pompeo’s views, slotting into the Senate Intelligence Authorization Act (SB 1761) some suggestive wording:

“It is the sense of Congress that WikiLeaks and the senior leadership of WikiLeaks resembles a non-state  hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such a service by the United States.”[2]

This inventive provision passed 14-1, the only demurral coming from Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon.  To The Hill, Wyden explained that “the use of the novel phrase ‘non-state intelligence service’ may have legal, constitutional, and policy implications, particularly should it be applied to journalists inquiring about secrets.”[3] And what, he feared, of the “unstated course of action” against those sinister non-state hostile intelligence services?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is the CIA Writing Legislation for the U.S. Congress?

Is the CIA Writing Legislation for the U.S. Congress?

I found that speech so disturbing at the time, I wrote an entire piece taking it apart. Below is an excerpt from that talk which is relevant to this piece:

WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged its followers to find jobs at CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations.

It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. In January of this year, our Intelligence Community determined that Russian military intelligence—the GRU—had used WikiLeaks to release data of US victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee. And the report also found that Russia’s primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks.

Pompeo said that in April. Fast forward a few months, and let’s take a look at what the U.S. Senate is up to.

From The Daily Beast:

If the Senate intelligence committee gets its way, America’s spy agencies will have to release a flood of information about Russian threats to the U.S.—the kind of threats that Donald Trump may not want made public.

The committee also wants Congress to declare WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service,” which would open Julian Assange and the pro-transparency organization – which most of the U.S. government considers a handmaiden of Russian intelligence – to new levels of surveillance.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Will Congress and Trump Declare War on WikiLeaks?

Will Congress and Trump Declare War on WikiLeaks?

The Senate Intelligence Committee recently passed its Intelligence Authorization Act for 2018 that contains a chilling attack on the First Amendment. Section 623 of the act expresses the “sense of Congress” that WikiLeaks resembles a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such.” This language is designed to delegitimize WikiLeaks, encourage the federal government to spy on individuals working with WikiLeaks, and block access to WikiLeaks’ website. This provision could even justify sending US forces abroad to arrest WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange or other WikiLeaks personnel.

WikiLeaks critics claim that the organization’s leaks harm US national security. However, these critics are unable to provide a single specific example of WikiLeaks’ actions harming the American people. WikiLeaks does harm the reputations of government agencies and politicians, however. For example, earlier this year WikiLeaks released information on the CIA’s hacking program. The leaks did not reveal any details on operations against foreign targets, but they did let the American people know how easy it is for the government to hack into their electronic devices.

For the last year, most of the news surrounding WikiLeaks has centered on its leak of emails showing how prominent Democrats worked to undermine Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. In order to deflect attention from these revelations, Democrats, aided by their allies in the media and even some Republicans, promulgated a conspiracy theory blaming the leaks on Russian hackers working to defeat Hillary Clinton. Even though there is no evidence the Russians were behind the leaks, many in both parties are still peddling the “Putin did it” narrative. This aids an effort by the deep state and its allies in Congress and the media to delegitimize last year’s election, advance a new Cold War with Russia, and criminalize WikiLeaks.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Even Wikileaks Haters Shouldn’t Want It Labeled a “Hostile Intelligence Agency”

IT USED TO be easy to cheer on WikiLeaks. But since 2010, many (myself included) have watched with dismay as WikiLeaks slid from the outlet courageous enough to host Chelsea Manning’s data dump to a murky melange of bad-faith propagandizing and newsworthy disclosures. At a time when WikiLeaks and its founder are willing to help push “Pizzagate,” and unable to tweet about sunglasses sans conspiracy-think, it’s not unfair to view Julian Assange as being motivated as much by his various axes to grind as he is by a zeal for transparency. But even the harshest WikiLeaks critics should resist the Senate’s attempt to brand the website a “non-state hostile intelligence service” in the 2018 intelligence authorization bill.

Ron Wyden isn’t a friend of WikiLeaks. In May, the Oregon senator’s office tweeted that it was an “established fact” that “Trump actively encouraged Russians & WikiLeaks to attack our democracy,” and pointed out, with suspicion, President Donald Trump’s praise for WikiLeaks during the campaign. Like his Democratic colleagues on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wyden embraced the tough language on Russian meddling that had been folded into the nation’s spy budget, but unlike them he voted against the reauthorization bill because of this sentence: “It is the sense of Congress that WikiLeaks and the senior leadership of WikiLeaks resemble a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such a service by the United States.”

So, what’s a “non-state hostile intelligence service”? That’s a great question, given that an “intelligence service” is a spy agency, and spy agencies are the tools of governments, and therefore not stateless.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wikileaks Reveals “Dumbo”: Tool That Allows CIA To Shut Down Cameras And Microphones

Wikileaks Reveals “Dumbo”: Tool That Allows CIA To Shut Down Cameras And Microphones

Since Wikileaks began releasing classified CIA documents back in March as part of its “Vault 7” series of leaks, purportedly the largest document dump in the agency’s history, it has publicly unveiled programs with innocent sounding names like “Marble”, “Scribbles” and “Archimedes” that the agency employs to help execute its operations, or to cover its tracks.

On Thursday, the group released the 19th installment in its series by publishing a series of documents detailing how the agency uses a custom-designed hacking exploit called “Dumbo” to destroy, or manufacture, evidence during field operations, according to a Wikileaks press release.

The CIA filed a request that such a tool back in 2012, according to a powerpoint presentations describing what capabilities it would need.

In a field guide for the tool, dated July 2015, the agency says “the intelligence community has identified a need…for a capability to suspend processes utilizing webcams and corrupt any video recordings that could compromise a PAG deployment.”

Once installed on a computer running the Windows operating system via a thumb drive, Dumbo identifies webcams and microphones and stops them from recording. The program notifies its operator of any files that were actively being written so that they can be corrupted or deleted, according to the field manual.

“Dumbo works by discovering which processes have access to the physical camera device and uses that information to corrupt video files.  In some instances, programs emulate a camera input to other programs; such is the case with Fujitsu’s YouCam.exe.  When this occurs, YouCam.exe will have control of the actual webcam, and feed input to other processes that record images to files as needed.  In this scenario, Dumbo will suspend YouCam.exe but will not be able to detect the other processes to which YouCam.exe is feeding images.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BOMBSHELL: Seth Rich Was In Contact With Wikileaks Says Former DC Homicide Detective

BOMBSHELL: Seth Rich Was In Contact With Wikileaks Says Former DC Homicide Detective

It’s been close to a year since Seth Rich, the 27 year old computer expert who worked for the DNC, was murdered – shot twice in the back without anything of value taken from him.  Rich was found alive and in shock before he bled out – his death ruled nothing more than a botched robbery.

Many suspect Rich was the source of the leaked DNC emails provided to WikiLeaks – a rumor which was fueled by the odd circumstances surrounding his death, the sudden retirement of D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier five weeks after the murder, and an email John Podesta sent to Hillary’s inner circle about making an example of a suspected leaker.


Podesta: “I’m definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any real basis for it.” https://www.wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/36082#efmAGSAH- 

WikiLeaks Reveals “Archimedes”: Malware Used To Hack Local Area Networks

WikiLeaks Reveals “Archimedes”: Malware Used To Hack Local Area Networks

In its seventh CIA leak since March 23rd, WikiLeaks has just revealed the user manual of a CIA hacking tool known as ‘Archimedes’ which is purportedly used to attack computers inside a Local Area Network (LAN).  The CIA tool works by redirecting a target’s webpage search to a CIA server which serves up a webpage that looks exactly like the original page they were expecting to be served, but which contains malware. It’s only possible to detect the attack by examining the page source.  Per WikiLeaks:

Today, May 5th 2017, WikiLeaks publishes “Archimedes”, a tool used by the CIA to attack a computer inside a Local Area Network (LAN), usually used in offices. It allows the re-directing of traffic from the target computer inside the LAN through a computer infected with this malware and controlled by the CIA. This technique is used by the CIA to redirect the target’s computers web browser to an exploitation server while appearing as a normal browsing session.

The document illustrates a type of attack within a “protected environment” as the the tool is deployed into an existing local network abusing existing machines to bring targeted computers under control and allowing further exploitation and abuse.


RELEASE: CIA ‘‘ system for exfiltration and browser hijacking. Includes manuals and binary signatures. https://wikileaks.org/vault7/releases/#Archimedes 


The RT provided more details:

The Archimedes tool enables traffic from one computer inside the LAN to be redirected through a computer infected with this malware and controlled by the CIA, according to WikiLeaks.

The technique is used to redirect the target’s computer web browser to an exploitation server while appearing as a normal browsing session, the whistleblowing site said. In this way, the hackers gain an entry point that allows them access to other machines on that network.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Prosecution of Assange is Persecution of Free Speech

Prosecution of Assange is Persecution of Free Speech

US authorities are reported to have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. This overreach of US government toward a publisher, whose principle is aligned with the U.S. Constitution, is another sign of a crumbling façade of democracy. The Justice Department in the Obama administration could not prosecute WikiLeaks for publishing documents pertaining to the US government, because they struggled to determine whether the First Amendment protection applied in this case. Now, the torch of Obama’s war on whistleblowers seems to have been passed on to Trump, who had shown disdain toward free speech and even calledthe U.S. media as “enemies of the people”.

Earlier this month, CIA Director Mike Pompeo vowed to end WikiLeaks, accusing the whistleblowing site as being a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia”. He also once called Edward Snowden a traitor and claimed that he should be executed. This declaration of war against WikiLeaks may bring a reminiscence of George W. Bush’s speech in the aftermath of 9-11, where he said, ‘either you are with us or against us’, and urged the nation to side with the government in his call to fight global ‘war on terror’.

In a recent interview on DemocracyNow!, journalist at The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald put this persecution of WikiLeaks in the context of a government assault on basic freedom. He spelled out their tactics, noting how the government first chooses a target group that is hated and lacks popular support, for they know attacking an idea or a group that is popular would meet resistance. He explained:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

WikiLeaks Issues Response To CIA Director Mike Pompeo

WikiLeaks Issues Response To CIA Director Mike Pompeo

The feud between Julian Assange and Wikiealks is growing.

After being blasted by new CIA Director Mike Pompeo yesterday as a “hostile non-state intelligence service,” late on Thursday Julian Assange responded on Twitter by trolling the CIA, the “state non-intelligence agency,” over its own roles in producing “al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iraq, Iran and Pinochet.”

So, one day later, having let tempers cool, Julian Assange – who one month ago released the contents of its “Vault7” exposing the CIA’s hacking exploits around the world in the “largest ever publication of confidential CIA documents” – issued moments ago the following statement via the Wikileaks twitter account responding to Mike Pompeo (highlights ours).

In his first speech in office, CIA Director Mike Pompeo rather than focusing on China, North Korea, or the rise of extremism, chose to announce an offensive against WikiLeaks and other publishers. In doing so Director Pompeo characterized WikiLeaks as a “non-state intelligence service”. This absurd definition would have all serious media organizations (with the exception of state owned media) transformed into ‘non-state intelligence services’- with the explicitly stated goal of stripping constitutional protections for publishers.

History shows the danger of allowing the CIA or any intelligence agency, whose very modus operandi includes misdirection and lying, to be the sole arbiter of what is true or what is prudent. Otherwise every day might see a repeat of the many foolish CIA actions which have led to death, displacement, dictatorship and terrorism.

All serious media organizations are in the business of obtaining information by encouraging sources to step forward. The key difference between media and intelligence is that the media is in the business of publishing what it discovers to a wide audience. WikiLeaks is an award winning media organization that is well known for the accuracy and volume of its publications and its millions of readers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Assange Responds To CIA Director That “Produced al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iraq, Iran & Pinochet”

Assange Responds To CIA Director That “Produced al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iraq, Iran & Pinochet”

After being blasted by new CIA Director Mike Pompeo yesterday as a “hostile non-state intelligence service,” Julian Assange has decided to respond by trolling the CIA, the “state non-intelligence agency,” over its own roles in producing “al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iraq, Iran and Pinochet.”

“Called a “non-state intelligence service” today by the “state non-intelligence agency” which produced al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iraq, Iran & Pinochet.”

Assange’s Twitter trolling was prompted by Pompeo’s attack on WikiLeaks yesterday which appeared to be in response to an op-ed Assange wrote in the Washington Post on Tuesday which referenced President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell speech, in which he warned of the dangers of the influence of the military industrial complex. Assange said the speech is similar to WikiLeaks’ own mission statement.

On his last night in office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a powerful farewell speech to the nation — words so important that he’d spent a year and a half preparing them. “Ike” famously warned the nation to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Much of Eisenhower’s speech could form part of the mission statement of WikiLeaks today. We publish truths regarding overreaches and abuses conducted in secret by the powerful.

Our most recent disclosures describe the CIA’s multibillion-dollar cyberwarfare program, in which the agency created dangerous cyberweapons, targeted private companies’ consumer products and then lost control of its cyber-arsenal. Our source(s) said they hoped to initiate a principled public debate about the “security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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