One month before the election, President Trump stood before a crowd in Pennsylvania and declared: “I love WikiLeaks!”
Before becoming president, Mr. Trump loved anything that undermined his opponent, Hillary Clinton. He repeatedly rejoyced in and shared information that appeared on the site, even if that information had been hacked, leaked, or stolen.
But now that he is in the White House, Trump is having to confront the threat of hacking, along with leaks from within his own administration. Trump and his aides have angrily railed against leakers, threatening prosecutions.
But with leak denouncing or not, there's no avoiding the major spill of information that the site leaked Tuesday.
WikiLeaks has published tons of what appear to be CIA spying secrets. And the service says that the info. they've divulged equals less than 1 percent of what they're capable of.
In all, there are 8,761 documents that account for "the entire hacking capacity of the CIA", and the lot is just the first of a series of "Vault 7" leaks. To date, it marks the most comprehensive release of information.
Already, the files include an immense amount of information compared to the Snowden files that exposed the vast hacking power of the NSA and other agencies.
In a statement that was produced along with the information spill, WikiLeaks states:
Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized "zero day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA.
The "hacking arsenal" includes software that could allow people to take control of the most popular consumer electronics products used, such as smartphones and smart TV voice remotes.
Many huge consumer companies such as Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung have already responded to the debacle. In a statement, Apple claims that they have already cleared up many of the instances that are causing problems. To better measure safety, they urge customers to keep software up to date: "While our initial analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS, we will continue work to rapidly address any identified vulnerabilities. We always urge customers to download the latest iOS to make sure they have the most recent security updates."
Samsung, although quite a bit briefer, mentioned that "Protecting consumers' privacy and the security of our devices is a top priority at Samsung. We are aware of the report in question and are urgently looking into the matter."
Former CIA Analyst John Nixon joined Fernand this morning to discuss the implications of the Wikileaks release of thousands of classified CIA documents and discusses whether he believes Russia to be behind the attack. Listen:
Meanwhile, the World Wide Web Foundation is calling out the Trump Administration to take action against these allegations:
If these new assertions prove true, we call on the Trump administration and other governments to stamp out such practices. The problem is widespread – in 2014 our Web Index research showed that 83% of countries had weak or non-existent safeguards to protect the privacy of online communications. Now is the time to address this – these issues will only magnify as more devices are connected and machine-to-machine communications become even more common.
The Web Foundation urges governments to take urgent steps to protect our digital privacy and security – including checks and balances to protect citizens from any overreach by security forces.
President Donald Trump, who is known to be very vocal on social media, has yet to comment on the issues. Perhaps his support is taking a new approach.