CIA contractors likely source of latest
WikiLeaks release: U.S. officials
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[March 09, 2017]
By John Walcott and Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Contractors likely
breached security and handed over documents describing the Central
Intelligence Agency's use of hacking tools to anti-secrecy group
WikiLeaks, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials told Reuters
on Wednesday.
Two officials speaking on condition of anonymity said intelligence
agencies have been aware since the end of last year of the breach, which
led to WikiLeaks releasing thousands of pages of information on its
website on Tuesday.
According to the documents, CIA hackers could get into Apple Inc
<AAPL.O> iPhones, devices running Google's Android software and other
gadgets in order to capture text and voice messages before they were
encrypted with sophisticated software.
The White House said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump was
"extremely concerned" about the CIA security breach that led to the
WikiLeaks release.
"Anybody who leaks classified information will be held to the highest
degree of law," spokesman Sean Spicer said.
The two officials told Reuters they believed the published documents
about CIA hacking techniques used between 2013 and 2016 were authentic.
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One of the officials with knowledge of the investigation said companies
that are contractors for the CIA have been checking to see which of
their employees had access to the material that WikiLeaks published, and
then going over their computer logs, emails and other communications for
any evidence of who might be responsible.
On Tuesday in a press release, WikiLeaks itself said the CIA had "lost
control" of an archive of hacking methods and it appeared to have been
circulated "among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an
unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of
the archive."
The CIA, which is the United States' civilian foreign intelligence
service, declined to comment on the authenticity of purported
intelligence documents.
The agency said in a statement that its mission was to collect foreign
intelligence abroad "to protect America from terrorists, hostile nation
states and other adversaries" and to be "innovative, cutting-edge, and
the first line of defense in protecting this country from enemies
abroad."
The CIA is legally prohibited from surveillance inside the United States
and "does not do so", the statement added.
CONTRACTORS MUST BE 'LOYAL TO AMERICA'
A U.S. government source familiar with the matter said it would be
normal for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA both to open
investigations into such leaks. U.S. officials previously have confirmed
that prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia for years have been conducting
a federal grand jury investigation of WikiLeaks and its personnel.
A spokesman for the prosecutors declined to comment on the possibility
of that probe being expanded. It is not clear if the investigation of
the latest CIA leaks is part of the probe.
Contractors have been revealed as the source of sensitive government
information leaks in recent years, most notably Edward Snowden and
Harold Thomas Martin, both employed by consulting firm Booz Allen
Hamilton <BAH.N> while working for the National Security Agency.
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and a Democrat on the
intelligence committee, said the government needed to stop the breaches.
"I think we really need to take a look at the contractor portion of the
employee workforce, because you have to be loyal to America to work for
an intelligence agency, otherwise don't do it," Feinstein said.
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Both U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives intelligence
committees have either opened or are expected to open inquiries into the
CIA breach, congressional officials said.
Some cyber security experts and technology companies have criticized the
government for opting to exploit rather than disclose software
vulnerabilities, though an interagency review process set up under
former President Barack Obama was intended to err on the side of
disclosure.
Those concerns would grow if U.S. authorities did not notify companies
that CIA documents describing various hacking techniques had been
compromised.
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The lobby of the CIA Headquarters Building in Langley, Virginia,
U.S. on August 14, 2008. REUTERS/Larry Downing/File Photo
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Apple, Alphabet Inc's <GOOGL.O> Google, Cisco Systems Inc <CSCO.O>
and Oracle Corp <ORCL.N> did not immediately respond when asked if
they were notified of a CIA breach before WikiLeaks made its files
public.
At Apple, none of the vulnerabilities described in the documents
provoked a panic, though analysis was continuing, according to a
person who spoke with engineers there.
Google's director of information security and privacy, Heather
Adkins, said in a statement: "As we’ve reviewed the documents, we're
confident that security updates and protections in both Chrome and
Android (operating systems) already shield users from many of these
alleged vulnerabilities. Our analysis is ongoing and we will
implement any further necessary protections."
LARGER NUMBER OF CONTRACTORS
One reason the investigation is focused on a potential leak by
contractors rather than for example a hack by Russian intelligence,
another official said, is that so far there is no evidence that
Russian intelligence agencies tried to exploit any of the leaked
material before it was published.
One European official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the
WikiLeaks material could in fact lead to closer cooperation between
European intelligence agencies and U.S. counterparts, which share
concerns about Russian intelligence operations.
U.S. intelligence agencies have accused Russia of seeking to tilt
last year's U.S. presidential election in Trump's favor, including
by hacking into Democratic Party emails. Moscow has denied the
allegation.
One major security problem was that the number of contractors with
access to information with the highest secrecy classification has
"exploded" because of federal budget constraints, the first U.S.
official said.
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U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to hire additional
permanent staff needed to keep pace with technological advances such
as the "internet of things" that connects cars, home security and
heating systems and other devices to computer networks, or to pay
salaries competitive with the private sector, the official said.
Reuters could not immediately verify the contents of the published
documents.
A person familiar with WikiLeaks’ activities said the group has had
the CIA hacking material for months, and that the release of the
material was in the works "for a long time."
In Germany on Wednesday, the chief federal prosecutor's office said
that it would review the WikiLeaks documents because some suggested
that the CIA ran a hacking hub from the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt.
"We will initiate an investigation if we see evidence of concrete
criminal acts or specific perpetrators," a spokesman for the federal
prosecutor's office told Reuters.
Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to visit Washington on March
14 for her first meeting with Trump, who has sharply criticized
Berlin for everything from its trade policy to what he considers
inadequate levels of military spending.
(Reporting by John Walcott, Mark Hosenball, Dustin Volz, Yara
Bayoumy in Washington and Matthias Sobolewski and Andrea Shalal in
Berlin; Additional reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco;
Writing by Grant McCool; Editing by Peter Graff and Bill Rigby)
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