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Wikileaks Reveals the Potential Danger of Smart TVs

ICYMI: Wikileaks  recently revealed thousands of documents called Vault 7, which outline the entirety of the CIA’s hacking capabilities. Within the documents are a variety of programs that the CIA uses to hack into everything, from your smartphone to your […]

ICYMI: Wikileaks  recently revealed thousands of documents called Vault 7, which outline the entirety of the CIA’s hacking capabilities. Within the documents are a variety of programs that the CIA uses to hack into everything, from your smartphone to your smart TV. It’s Wikileaks largest ever document dump.

There’s one program in particular that have gotten people talking. Called Weeping Angel after the Doctor Who monsters that you can’t look away from because they’ll send you back in time as soon as your eyes aren’t on them. According to Wikileaks, the Weeping Angel program was able to extract browser and WiFi credentials, as well as browser history. From, you know, all those devices you can’t look away from.

Wikileaks
That’s right. The CIA could see your browser history. Creeps. Source.

As scary as that sounds, it’s not even the worst part. The program could also make your smart TV appear like it was off, but in reality it’s in standby mode. This would potentially allow the TV to stream audio, capture video and exploit a hole in Samsung’s remote support function.

Importantly, the program only affected Samsung’s F8000 series of smart TVs. The CIA wasn’t working alone in this program either, as the United Kingdom’s MI5 were also interested in the Weeping Angel program capabilities.

The documents released also alleged that the CIA has the ability to hack into anyone’s Samsung or Apple smartphones. The documents stated this is because the CIA were aware of bugs within the technology of both operating systems, and instead of telling anyone about it, the CIA kept it to themselves and used it as a tool for spying or gaining intelligence.

Obviously the CIA has denied these claims through CBS, saying:

“We have no comment on the authenticity of purported intelligence documents released by Wikileaks or on the status of any investigation into the source of the documents.”

But of course that’s exactly what you would say if you’d just been found to have been spying on people. For now, maybe just keep any personal info completely off your devices.