New Wikileaks Vault 7 Release Proves The CIA Bugs “Factory Fresh” iPhones and Other Devices

Wikileaks has released another portion of Vault 7 called “Dark Matter.” In this telling release comes the story of the CIA’s involvement in bugging a number of Apple products, including iPhones and the Macbook Air.

In short, the leak exposes how the CIA infects Apple Mac computer firmware to gain ‘persistence’ on Apple devices, including laptops and phones. These projects have been developed by the CIA’s Embedded Development Branch (EDB).

WikiLeaks explains that this ‘bug’ allows an attacker/hacker to boot its attack software from a USB stick onto a device, even when a firmware password has been enabled. According to WiKiLeaks, the infector is stored in the Apple Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter.

Essentially, the leak suggests the CIA is bugging iPhones from their factory fresh state and that, regardless of whether or not the user deletes or re-installs an operating system, their phone is bugged. Data can be collected, devices can be hacked, and so forth.

The full live stream press briefing about this release can be viewed here: LIVE: WikiLeaks press briefing in some minutes: CIA #Vault7 “darkmatter” ask questions with #AskWL https://t.co/ldG78exSsu
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 23, 2017

Below is WikiLeaks’ press release on the matter.

Today, March 23rd 2017, WikiLeaks releases Vault 7 “Dark Matter”, which contains documentation for several CIA projects that infect Apple Mac Computer firmware (meaning the infection persists even if the operating system is re-installed) developed by the CIA’s Embedded Development Branch (EDB). These documents explain the techniques used by CIA to gain ‘persistence’ on Apple Mac devices, including Macs and iPhones and demonstrate their use of EFI/UEFI and firmware malware.

Among others, these documents reveal the “Sonic Screwdriver” project which, as explained by the CIA, is a “mechanism for executing code on peripheral devices while a Mac laptop or desktop is booting” allowing an attacker to boot its attack software for example from a USB stick “even when a firmware password is enabled”. The CIA’s “Sonic Screwdriver” infector is stored on the modified firmware of an Apple Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter.

“DarkSeaSkies” is “an implant that persists in the EFI firmware of an Apple MacBook Air computer” and consists of “DarkMatter”, “SeaPea” and “NightSkies”, respectively EFI, kernel-space and user-space implants.

Documents on the “Triton” MacOSX malware, its infector “Dark Mallet” and its EFI-persistent version “DerStake” are also included in this release. While the DerStake1.4 manual released today dates to 2013, other Vault 7 documents show that as of 2016 the CIA continues to rely on and update these systems and is working on the production of DerStarke2.0.

Also included in this release is the manual for the CIA’s “NightSkies 1.2” a “beacon/loader/implant tool” for the Apple iPhone. Noteworthy is that NightSkies had reached 1.2 by 2008, and is expressly designed to be physically installed onto factory fresh iPhones. i.e the CIA has been infecting the iPhone supply chain of its targets since at least 2008.

While CIA assets are sometimes used to physically infect systems in the custody of a target it is likely that many CIA physical access attacks have infected the targeted organization’s supply chain including by interdicting mail orders and other shipments (opening, infecting, and resending) leaving the United States or otherwise.

Why Does This Matter?

We are learning the truth about what government agencies are doing behind the backs of citizens and without their approval. While it can be argued that these measures are taken for the sake of national security, there is much more at play here, and as Edward Snowden has always stated, the public deserves to know, and we all should decide whether or not this is right.

We are in a time when we are learning a great deal about the true workings of our world and governments, and the more we learn, the more questions we have — and rightly so. There is an ‘inconvenient truth’, if you will, that humanity is faced with and must begin to work through, and that is that we do not determine who is elected to our governments like we might think. Our governments are not who we think they are and do not have our best interests at heart.

We must accept this truth, because that is the only way we can begin to change our world and start creating one where humans can thrive. We have the capability to do so, but we must first take the manipulative forces out of the equation. Awareness of what is really going on is that first step. News stories like this help us begin asking those big questions that lead to understanding what’s really going on and then effecting change.