Security News > 2020 > June > CIA Unit That Crafts Hacking Tools Didn't Protect Itself
A specialized CIA unit that developed hacking tools and cyber weapons didn't do enough to protect its own operations and wasn't prepared to respond when its secrets were exposed, according to an internal report prepared after the worst data loss in the intelligence agency's history.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, obtained the redacted report from the Justice Department after it was introduced as evidence in a court case this year involving stolen CIA hacking tools.
The 2017 report was produced one year after the theft of sensitive tools for hacking into adversaries' networks that were developed by the CIA's specialized Center for Cyber Intelligence.
The CIA report revealed lax cybersecurity measures by the specialized unit and the niche information technology systems that it relies upon, which is separate from the systems more broadly used by everyday agency employees.
The disclosure of the hacking tools featured prominently in the trial this year of Joshua Schulte, a former CIA software engineer accused of stealing a large trove of the agency's hacking tools and handing it to WikiLeaks.