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Edward Snowden has explosively claimed the US Government is “secretly paying to keep US software unsafe."

The former National Security Agent made the shocking statement as Wikileak's announced a huge release of confidential documents from the CIA.

As part of its mysterious Year Zero series, the secretive organisation claimed the US Criminal Intelligence Agency has been carrying out a global hacking campaign using smart TVs and mobile phones.

In response, Snowden wrote on Twitter on Tuesday: "Still working through the publication, but what @Wikileaks has here is genuinely a big deal. Looks authentic."

He then added that the program and office names that were revealed in the hack, code-named Vault 7, are real and would only be known by an insider.

That is when he explained just why this latest hack was such a big deal, writing: "If you're writing about the CIA/ @Wikileaks story, here's the big deal: first public evidence USG secretly paying to keep US software.

"The CIA reports show the USG developing vulnerabilities in US products, then intentionally keeping the holes open. Reckless beyond words."

Snowden finished by writing: "Why is this dangerous? Because until closed, any hacker can use the security hole the CIA left open to break into any iPhone in the world."

Snowden is the whistleblower responsible for the biggest leak in modern US history.

He quit his £130k a year job at America's National Security Agency after claiming he could not stand by and watch the civil liberties of millions of people be eroded.

The 29-year-old former CIA technical director then fled to Hong Kong.

The CIA and White House have declined to comment on any of the allegations from Wikileaks or Snowden.

(Image: PA)

"We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents," CIA spokesman Jonathan Liu said in a statement.

The first part of Vault 7 comprises of 8,761 documents, said to come from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA's Centre for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.

"This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA," WikiLeaks said in a statement.

Wikileaks claims the CIA has been carrying out a global covert hacking program that exploits US and European companies.

These were thought to include Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows and even Samsung TVs, which it says "are turned into covert microphones."

(Image: androidcentral)

Mr Assange was set to speak about Year Zero on Facebook on Tuesday, but a livestream of the event was reportedly hacked. It is not clear when the event has been rescheduled to.

The group said that from October 2014 the CIA was "looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks" to possibly enable them to "engage in nearly undetectable assassinations."

They added: "The CIA's Mobile Devices Branch (MDB) developed numerous attacks to remotely hack and control popular smart phones."

They claimed these included iPhones, which account for 14% of the market and Google Android, "which is used to run the majority of the world's smart phones (85%) including Samsung, HTC and Sony. 1.15 billion Android powered phones were sold last year."

(Image: REUTERS)

They claimed: "Infected phones can be instructed to send the CIA the user's geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone's camera and microphone."

They said the CIA could then "bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the "smart" phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied."

In an online statement on its website, Wikileaks also claims the attack against Samsung smart TVs was developed in cooperation with the UK's domestic intelligence agency MI5/BTSS.

It claims "Weeping Angel", developed by the CIA's Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones.

(Image: PA)

The organisation added: "After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a 'Fake-Off' mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on.

"In 'Fake-Off' mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the internet to a covert CIA server."

They also claimed the CIA also runs "a very substantial effort to infect and control Microsoft Windows users with its malware, infecting CDs, DVDs and USB sticks.

Wikileaks has also claimed CIA malware could have infiltrated presidential Twitter accounts - raising fears Barack Obama was hacked during his time in office.

(Image: Twitter/Barack Obama)

The organisation claimed that "specific CIA malware revealed in Year Zero is able to penetrate, infest and control Android and iPhone software that runs or has run presidential Twitter accounts.

"The CIA attacks this software by using undisclosed security vulnerabilities ("zero days") possessed by the CIA but if the CIA can hack these phones then so can everyone else who has obtained or discovered the vulnerability.

"As long as the CIA keeps these vulnerabilities concealed from Apple and Google (who make the phones) they will not be fixed, and the phones will remain hackable.

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"The same vulnerabilities exist for the population at large, including the US Cabinet, Congress, top CEOs, system administrators, security officers and engineers.

"By hiding these security flaws from manufacturers like Apple and Google the CIA ensures that it can hack everyone at the expense of leaving everyone hackable."

In a separate statement it said: "The archive appears to have been circulated among former US government hackers and contractors in an unauthorised manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.

"By the end of 2016, the CIA's hacking division, which formally falls under the agency's Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5,000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other "weaponized" malware.

"Such is the scale of the CIA's undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook.

(Image: Samsung)

"The CIA had created, in effect, its "own NSA" with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified."

Mr Assange has been under investigation by the US since 2010 when WikiLeaks published confidential military documents.

In the same year, the Swedish Director of Public Prosecution opened an investigation into sexual offences Assange is alleged to have committed.

In 2012, facing extradition to Sweden, he took refuge at the Embassy of Ecuador in London after being granted political asylum.

In August 2014, he announced he would be leaving the embassy "soon".