The first thing to say about the archive of hacking tools that were stolen from the CIA and published on the WikiLeaks website, is that they are not tools of mass wiretapping, and the means of surveillance for specific phones, computers and TVs. There is no evidence that these tools were used against the Americans or involved in some inappropriate manner. If such evidence existed, to be sure, WikiLeaks — whose main task is not to provide transparency, and to undermine the foundations of national security of the United States — definitely would have published them. It follows that the targets of these hacking methods — that is, those who will derive the greatest benefit from their publication — are the terrorists of the Islamic state (a terrorist organization banned in Russia — approx. ed.), the North Korean creators of the atomic bomb, Iranian, Chinese and Russian spies and other opponents of the United States.
WikiLeaks said that a former employee of the institutions of the American government gave him 8761 file, which this website published on Tuesday, March 7. However, given the close relationship of this organization with the Russian intelligence services, whose existence was confirmed in the investigation of hacker attacks on the system of national Committee of the Democratic party by the American intelligence community — hardly anyone will be surprised if it turns out that the leak, too, is Moscow. The Kremlin will no doubt be very glad if the CIA will reduce the intensity or even to cease its spying operations around the world, so it’s possible that he composed for WikiLeaks false and hypocritical pretext for the publication of these files, namely a call to begin the “public discussion” of the powers of the CIA and the establishment of external control mechanisms over the activities of this Agency.
In addition to losing valuable tools of surveillance of the CIA now will be — that this was achieved by the whistleblowers — in the midst of fierce disputes, and will be forced to confront the unreasonable calls for “cooperation” with the technology companies. Proponents of the theory that “a state within a state” seeks to weaken the authority of the trump, will gladly jump at the published evidence that in the Arsenal of the CIA were the tools and the languages of other countries: they are now rightly able to say that a hacker attack on the national Committee of the Democratic party in fact was a CIA operation “under foreign flags”.
Fighters for civil rights insist that working for the U.S. government hackers had informed the manufacturers of smartphones and computers about the vulnerabilities of their products and not used them to carry out their operation. However, the device protection from external intrusions is the task of the manufacturers, not the CIA. As written by Ellen Nakashima (Ellen Nakashima) of the Washington Post, the American Agency already report all they discovered the software vulnerabilities of a special government Commission, which decides whether to notify the manufacturers. And really zealous privacy advocates believe that the Russian FSB will be informed Apple and Google about all the “zero day exploits”, which she finds out? That is, in fact, fighters for civil rights in favour of unilateral disarmament of the United States in cyberspace.
There is no doubt that the CIA will be able to survive this leak and create new tools. According to experts, most of what has been published, is a relatively simple malware. However, the CIA, like other members of the intelligence community will have to solve a very important question on how can continue to operate effectively in cyberspace while protecting their own secrets and techniques. Now it is necessary to review the procedures for checking employees and contractors with access to top secret data, and to create a more effective means of protection against penetration from the outside. However, this Agency in any case should not stop the process of developing quality technological tools, allowing the U.S. to maintain its edge over opponents, including the means of spying on them.
