Wikileaks published a new batch of files belonging to the CIA Vault 7 archive that reveals the ‘Dumbo’ tool used by the agents to disable security cameras.

Wikileaks published a new batch of files belonging to the CIA Vault 7 archive, the documents detail a tool code named ‘Dumbo‘ that was developed by the intelligence agency to disables security cameras and corrupts recordings.

It identifies installed devices like webcams and microphones, either locally or connected by wireless (Bluetooth, WiFi) or wired networks.

CIA agents have to execute “Dumbo” directly from a USB thumb drive in the targeted device, it requires SYSTEM privileges to perform its activity.

The tool supports 32bit Windows XP, Windows Vista, and newer versions of Windows operating system. 64bit Windows XP or Windows versions prior to XP are not supported.

The tool is able to mute microphones, disable network adapters, and suspend processes utilizing webcams and corrupt any video recordings.

“Dumbo is a capability to suspend processes utilizing webcams and corrupt any video recordings that could compromise a PAG deployment. The PAG (Physical Access Group) is a special branch within the CCI (Center for Cyber Intelligence); its task is to gain and exploit physical access to target computers in CIA field operations.” states the description of the tool provided by Wikileaks.

Dumbo also reports operators where footage files are stored allowing their corruption or deletion.

“[The tool] identifies installed devices like webcams and microphones, either locally or connected by wireless (Bluetooth, WiFi) or wired networks. All processes related to the detected devices (usually recording, monitoring or detection of video/audio/network streams) are also identified and can be stopped by the operator,” WikiLeaks said. “By deleting or manipulating recordings the operator is aided in creating fake or destroying actual evidence of the intrusion operation.”

According to the user guide, Personal Security Products such as the Kaspersky antivirus may block the installation of the device driver necessary to perform Dumbo operations.

Below the list of release published by Wikileaks since March:

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Wikileaks, Dumbo)

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