To me, these stories are a) vital, and b) dis-heartening, and c) demonstrative of the fact that we need to continue to build better, open and secure, operating systems and tools for end users.
I think there is definitely something to be said for the fact that if the CIA is doing this, then criminals are too - since the fine line between what the CIA does and what a criminal does is simply, a sheet of paper with someones signature on it.
Most of all, however, I think its very important that we continue to reveal these secrets. For those of us not living under the CIA's nefarious shadow, it is good to see them get their secrets revealed.
This honestly doesn't sound very interesting. Just a regular piece of software using a few of many available location services that are based on SSID scanning. Mozilla for example offers the same: https://location.services.mozilla.com/
On page 22: " <wifi-ap> <ssid>TIPICOS GLORIA</ssid> <mac>68:7F:74:74:34:2B</mac> <rssi>-75</rssi> </wifi-ap>"
The SSID is the name of a Mexican restaurant in western Washington DC...
Unfortunately the document doesn't include API documentation for the geolocation services of Google and Microsoft. Would be interesting to know if CIA is aware of a way around api-key restrictions :)
Why is there a judgement on the CIA's actions everytime a tool is leaked? It's their charter to spy on people, the targets being American or not is just semantic. For instance, if an American is a person of interest, the only thing required is for the FBI to be a (name sake) participant in the investigation.
Outrage against 3 letter security/intelligence agencies is silly, it's like blaming Google for being great at search
I'm curious what an intercept of Mac Product looks like in the Dark Matter scenario. It's not the first mention I've seen of the CIA intercepting the supply chain of an organization.
If one was to purchase a Mac and it was to be intercepted and infected, what does that resealing process look like?
After reading through the user guide, this appears to contain no vulnerabilities/exploits, just a payload to fulfill a need to track the location pattern of a target.
This is very basic stuff which could be easily replicated with kismet and some scripts. I am guessing this is some sort of intern project.
Am I the only one wondering if they have a tool called Anna?
Do you want to build a Snowden?
As someone who is not that savvy about malware or persistent software calling "home," what is the best operating system that will avoid these type of attacks?
This type of thing might be very useful for preventing CIA's Harold Martin counterparts from leaking from CIA hardware.
Isn't this the same principle google uses for their location services?
Why don't they just use the location APIs? :D
Is this just an article based on the (already posted) vault7 trove of documents?
Because it seems to be a lightweight blog post based on an already old leak, without much analysis.
This is nothing new. Many IT departments at security-sensitive companies have been doing this for a while with their own gear. It's quite common for enterprised-managed laptops to scan for SSIDs and report this information back to HQ. This is primarily done to assist in the tracking of stolen laptops.
Many will quietly connect to open APs when they're discovered and use DNS requests to tunnel this information back, thus attempting to work around captive portals. They might, for example, send an A-record query like this:
chrissnell-laptop-DEADBEEFC0W.security.bigcorp.com
where DEADBEEFC0W is the ESSID of a discovered nearby AP and security.bigcorp.com is a specialized DNS server configured to record this data.