Newly leaked secret documents reveal that the CIA has been targeting and hacking home and public wireless routers for years in an effort to conduct illegal surveillance.
The leaked documents are part of an ongoing series of leaks released by the website WikiLeaks, revealing the work of the CIA's elite hacking team, called the Engineering Development Group.
Among the dozens of files are user and installation guides, manuals, and other “secret” maps and charts that reveal several hacking tool suites, which allow the organization to conduct targeted exploitation of networks and computers.
One of the tools, called CherryBlossom, allows the service to monitor a target's online activity, redirect the browser, detect email addresses and phone numbers, and more.
Routers remain a prime target for both intelligence agencies and hackers, because they act as central points of connection to the internet and entire networks. What makes routers such an attractive target is that the security flaws that make them easy to exploit are not often disclosed, and of course there are not that many updates.
According to a document dating back to 2010, the CIA had developed implants “for approximately 25 different devices from 10 different manufacturers” by mid-2012, including routers from Asus, Belkin, D-Link, Linksys and Netgear.
It is unclear whether the malicious implants are still operational to this day or if they were withdrawn.
Let us recall that Wikileaks has been releasing documents in the Vault 7 series since March 7, exposing more and more tools of CIA hackers.
“Year Zero” CIA exploits popular hardware and software.
“Weeping Angel” the spying tool the agency uses to infiltrate smart TVs, turning them into covert microphones.
“Dark Matter” exploits targeting iPhones and Macs.
“Marble” the source code of a secret anti-forensic framework. Essentially an obfuscator the CIA uses to hide the true source of malware.
“Grasshopper” a framework that allows the intelligence agency to easily create custom malware to compromise Microsoft Windows and bypass any virus protection.
“Archimedes”– a MitM attack tool allegedly created by the CIA to target computers within a local area network (LAN).
Scribbles” a software designed to add 'web beacons' to classified documents, to allow for the control of leaks by the secret services.
Athena:designed to be able to gain complete control of infected Windows computers, allowing the CIA to perform a multitude of functions on the target machine, such as deleting data or installing malware, stealing data and sending it to CIA servers.
CherryBlossom tool that monitors a target's internet activity, redirects the browser, detects email addresses and phone numbers, and more, via the router
