Has any of your secrets got out and it made your stomach churn? That’s exactly what’s going on with the new Vault 7 files leaked to Wikileaks.

What makes this leak so damaging? Entire source code of components used in exploits targeting specific vulnerabilities or holes in programs that can be used to access things without authorization All governments hackers using employment in the US Consulate in FrankFurt, Germany as a cover was blown and possible real identities of these state hackers was revealed the very instance that this leak was released to the public as a result of their blown cover

What incompetency may of lead to these leaks? Well as New York Times reported Vault 7 was traded among former US government hackers and contractors without prior authorization by the US Government There is generally not much faith that any US intelligence agency follows good opsec policies when executing their attacks such as Equation Group also known as the NSA getting part of their hacking tools stolen from a server used to stage and launch attacks against foreign targets even though specific instructions written with the tools gave steps to fully prevent that very thing from happening. Given the NSA can’t follow good opsec even with good effort it isn’t a far stretch that opsec was at least a major contributing factor of this information being able to be leaked without the leaker being detected (so far)

Why should the average person care? These CIA hacking tools can potentially be used by anyone for any intent benign or malicious The CIA has the ability to make cars crash without leaving a trace The CIA can make malware appear as though it came from a different intelligence agency giving domestic election meddling conspiracies a little more truth All of these hacking tools could be conceivably used without a warrant and with a touch of a button be deployed and spying on any person with a smartphone or even smart tv instantly



In summary: The recent Vault 7 leaks have been one of the if not the most damaging US intelligence leaks ever in history so far. We’ll have to wait until more people can conduct further analysis on all the leaked data for more revealing stories but until then we can only speculate what these tools have been used on and why.