Security News > 2020 > June > Theft of CIA's "Vault Seven" Hacking Tools Due to Its Own Lousy Security

Theft of CIA's "Vault Seven" Hacking Tools Due to Its Own Lousy Security
2020-06-18 11:34

The anti-secrecy group dubbed the release "Vault 7," and U.S. officials have said it was the biggest unauthorized disclosure of classified information in the CIA's history, causing the agency to shut down some intelligence operations and alerting foreign adversaries to the spy agency's techniques.

The October 2017 report by the CIA's WikiLeaks Task Force, several pages of which were missing or redacted, portrays an agency more concerned with bulking up its cyber arsenal than keeping those tools secure.

Security procedures were "Woefully lax" within the special unit that designed and built the tools, the report said.

Without the WikiLeaks disclosure, the CIA might never have known the tools had been stolen, according to the report.

The task force report was provided to The Washington Post by the office of Sen. Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who has pressed for stronger cybersecurity in the intelligence community.


News URL

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/06/theft_of_cias_v.html