Published in News

CIA was spying on intel partners

by on25 August 2017

 
Targeted the FBI and Homeland security


The FBI and Homeland Security, who relied on the CIA for tech support for biometric data, were being targeted by spyware.

According to what is fairly likely to be Russian intelligence leaked to Wikileaks, the CIA wrote a program called ExpressLane, is designed to be deployed alongside a biometric collection system that the CIA provides to partner agencies.

Since 2009 this software has been siphoning data back to the CIA on the off-chance those partners are holding out on them.

ExpressLane masquerades as a software update, delivered in-person by CIA technicians — but the documents make clear that the program itself will remain unchanged. The program siphons the system’s data to a thumb drive, where agents can examine it to see if there’s anything the partner system is holding back. If the partners refuse the phoney update, there’s a hidden kill-switch that lets agents shut down the entire system after a set period of time, requiring an in-person visit to restore the system.

WikiLeaks’s "sources" claim the program was primarily used against US agencies like the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, although the documents themselves do not say that. In fact the CIA doesn’t maintain any significant biometric database of its own, it’s also unclear what the agency would do with any data it obtained. 

WikiLeaks continues to release the agency’s hacking tools as part of the Vault 7 campaign.

Last modified on 25 August 2017
Rate this item
(0 votes)

Read more about: