On Tuesday, March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks dumped Part 1 — Year Zero — of Vault 7.

Each part of Vault 7 concerns the CIA.

This is going to be fun.

The WikiLeaks Twitter feed is particularly informative and educational on this topic. My favourite is this one:

Of course, very little of Vault 7 has made Big Media and their smaller acolytes:

Senator Rand Paul (R – Kentucky) thinks that the content will alarm the public:

ZeroHedge has the best summary of Vault 7, Part 1. A summary and excerpts follow. Emphases in the original:

A total of 8,761 documents have been published as part of ‘Year Zero’, the first in a series of leaks the whistleblower organization has dubbed ‘Vault 7.’ WikiLeaks said that ‘Year Zero’ revealed details of the CIA’s “global covert hacking program,” including “weaponized exploits” used against company products including “Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.”

WikiLeaks tweeted the leak, which it claims came from a network inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.

Among the more notable disclosures which, if confirmed, “would rock the technology world“, the CIA had managed to bypass encryption on popular phone and messaging services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. According to the statement from WikiLeaks, government hackers can penetrate Android phones and collect “audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.”

Another profound revelation is that the CIA can engage in “false flag” cyberattacks which portray Russia as the assailant. Discussing the CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s UMBRAGE group, Wikileaks’ source notes that it “collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.

From this introduction it is clear that the average consumer can be monitored easily:

The CIA also runs a very substantial effort to infect and control Microsoft Windows users with its malware. This includes multiple local and remote weaponized “zero days”, air gap jumping viruses such as “Hammer Drill” which infects software distributed on CD/DVDs, infectors for removable media such as USBs, systems to hide data in images or in covert disk areas ( “Brutal Kangaroo”) and to keep its malware infestations going.

Just as important is the story that ‘Russia’ hacked the DNC and the US election. Could it be that ‘Russia’ is actually the CIA? Given Vault 7’s information, who would find that surprising?

Indeed.

In Europe, the CIA operates out of the US consulate in Frankfurt:

a covert base for its hackers covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa. CIA hackers operating out of the Frankfurt consulate ( “Center for Cyber Intelligence Europe” or CCIE) are given diplomatic (“black”) passports and State Department cover.

The strangest — and most sinister — CIA technology involves motor vehicles:

As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.

This might explain the mysterious death of investigative journalist Michael Hastings in 2013. In 2015, WhoWhatWhy published an article positing that Hastings’s car turning into a fireball while he was behind the wheel was an assassination. Many thought such an accusation was the stuff of conspiracy theory, even though experts said it was possible. Emphases mine below:

At the time of Hastings’ death, counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke told The Huffington Post that it was possible that Hastings’ car had been hacked; that the known details of the crash were consistent with a car cyber attack.

“There is reason to believe that intelligence agencies for major powers”—including the United States—know how to remotely seize control of a car, Clarke said.

At the time, however, Clarke’s suggestion received little attention from the mainstream media. In the past two years, the issue of automobile cybersecurity has entered the mainstream arena.

Since 2013, scientists have proven the possibility of hacking a car, and lawmakers are revealing the lack of cybersecurity against these types of threats built into today’s digital cars.

“Your car may have as many as 30 separate electronic control units, some of them built for wireless access. Hackers have shown that they can disconnect brakes, kill acceleration and more—although most hacks currently require direct, wired access to the car’s systems. Even so, a lab technician turned off our test car while we were driving it—from a cell phone,” Chris Meyer, Vice President of Consumer Reports, said in an email to WhoWhatWhy.

This is worth noting:

At the time of his death, Hastings had been working on a story about CIA Director John Brennan. The president of Strategic Forecasting Inc. (“Stratfor”), a CIA contract global intelligence firm, has described Brennan in secret emails as someone on a “witch hunt” of investigative journalists. Brennan, of course, has denied these claims: a CIA spokesperson told reporter Kimberly Dvorak in an email that notwithstanding WikiLeaks, “any suggestion that Director Brennan has ever attempted to infringe on constitutionally-protected press freedoms is offensive and baseless.”

Is it possible that Brennan felt threatened by the content of Hastings’ would-be story? If yes, how would the CIA have responded to such an expose?

Hastings was worried that someone had tampered with his Mercedes. He told his friends and colleagues. Then:

at 4:20am on June 18, on Highland Avenue in Los Angeles, Hastings’ silver Mercedes C250 exploded and hit a palm tree. There were no apparent attempts to brake before the collision.

Expert opinion was split in 2013 and in 2015 as to whether this was intentional or an accident.

No doubt Vault 7, Part 1 — Year Zero — will get people talking once more about Hastings’s horrific death.

Meanwhile, please be sure to read the ZeroHedge article in full. It is horrifying that an intelligence agency would commit all these acts against innocent civilians around the world.