Wikileaks released a trove of files on Tuesday that confess about the CIA’s expertise on hacking your smartphones. According to the documents, CIA has a library of software attacks which can access to your smartphones and Apple iPhone, including those which could have a complete hold of your device.
The wide range of alternative access opportunities is provided by the attacks. Some give the sole power to the attacks by giving the control over “Kernel” which is the head of operating system for a smartphone, or at least to have a so-called “root” access, meaning to have large control over the files and software processes. Information like geolocation, communications, contacts, and more could be accessed by this technique. This could be helpful in targeted hacking instead of extended surveillance. However, one document reads a process by which specific unit within CIA “develops software exploits and implants for high priority target cell phones for intelligence collection.”
The Wikileaks documents further include detailed charts showing the probability of certain attacks which could be done by CIA on different types of cell phones and operating systems, including recent versions of iOS and Android – in addition to the attacks CIA has collected from other, public sources of Malware.
