By Alec Hogg
In my line of work, one engages in an excessive number of what might be termed “sensitive” conversations. Whistle blowers mostly possess a conscience that surpasses their courage. So when something drives them into spilling the beans, they tend to demand absolute anonymity and confidentiality.
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In future, that’s suddenly going to be a lot more difficult to guarantee. This week’s Vault 7 disclosures by Wikileaks has eliminated the default response of communicating via Whatsapp. Because the world now knows Whatsapp’s supposedly unbreakable encryption technology is, well, not so unbreakable after all.
Documentation which Wikileaks has put into the public domain says dozens of sophisticated hacks created by the US’s Central Intelligence Agency have been copied and sold around the world. Including the ability of anyone with enough money and sufficiently nefarious intent, to tap into Whatsapp conversations or read the texts.
Ditto pretty much anything else relayed through devices might have believed was private, including iPhones and those powered by Android. What really shook me was reading of the tool which provides remote access to Samsung TVs – turning them into bugging devices even while switched off. For one who has never taken overly notice of such things, reading the Wikileaks Vault 7 statement felt like having the scales removed from my eyes.
Julian Assange, Wikileaks editor, argues that the latest disclosures are in the public interest because “comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled proliferation of such cyber weapons and the global arms trade.” He says the hacking tools have such a high value that the incentive for some CIA insiders to copy and sell them is irresistible.
Wikileaks’s biggest beef is that the CIA has broken an agreement it had with the Obama Administration to disclose vulnerabilities to Apple, Google, Microsoft and other US-based manufacturers. Doing so would have enabled the companies to correct security flaws before criminals used them. If the CIA knows, others with less noble intentions will also.
Assange’s organisation describes Vault 7 as even bigger than the 2013 leaks which shook the global intelligence community and made Edward Snowdon a household name. The former CIA employee, regarded by some as an American hero, by others a traitor, copied and leaked up to 200,000 classified documents. Snowdon now lives in Russia where he was granted asylum. Wikileaks’ latest deep throat has, wisely, remained under cover.
The learning from this? If you haven’t taken cyber security seriously, maybe now’s the time to do so. The only way to keep communication confidential is by taking a walk in the great outdoors. Even better is to apply Warren Buffett’s principle of never doing anything you would be embarrassed by if it became public. Monitoring devices are no longer in the realm of science fiction or the movies. You can be pretty certain that if you do something you’re not proud of, someone, somewhere is going to find out.
