‘Woefully lax’ security led to WikiLeaks Vault 7 dump’, June 17, 2020, scmagazine.com (my bolds and italics)

“Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., pressed new Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to detail security measures taken to safeguard sensitive intelligence after an internal CIA report said “woefully lax security” at the Center for Cyber Intelligence led to the “largest data loss in CIA history” – the leak of hacking tools to WikiLeaks.

Wyden had obtained a copy of the nearly three-year-old report on the 2017 “Vault 7” leak that occurred a year after hackers stole what could be as much as 34 TB of data.

“We failed to recognize or act in a coordinated fashion on warning signs that a person or persons with access to CIA classified information posed an unacceptable risk to national security,” the WikiLeaks Task Force report said, noting that “in a press to meet growing and critical mission needs, CCI had prioritized building cyber weapons at the expense of securing their own systems.”

The information released by WikiLeaks over time offered insight into the “CIA’s tradecraft in cyber operations.”
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Sen. Wyden “is quite right in asking why what amounts to standard security practices in the industry are not being adopted by the CIA,” said Oliveira. “After all, they are in the business of acquiring intelligence often through cyber offensive methods and are technically aware of how to exploit vulnerable systems, such as those that are not protected by MFA.”

The DNI has asked for $62.8 billion, according to public figures, which Olivera said “should allow them to carve out a slice of that money to address the questions posed by Sen. Wyden.”

Hell’s bells; the DNI should give Assange the Medal of Freedom for demonstrating how insanely vulnerable the CIA’s security is! Will any elected officials call for the CIA to be disbanded as JFK had, as well as the two authors mentioned here?  Think ‘CIA Psyops & Special Ops, as well.

 ‘Who needs ‘Russian hackers’? Report reveals CIA incompetence to blame for Vault 7 breach’, Nebojsa Malic, June 17, 2020, RT.com

Vault 7 was the name given to cyber attack tools developed by the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), and published by WikiLeaks in March 2017. It was the largest data breach in Langley’s history, with long-lasting consequences. For example, Chinese cybersecurity companies recently used Vault 7 evidence to show that the US has been hacking China for over a decade.

While the CIA ineptitude is the obvious takeaway, no one seems to have noticed the real bombshell: the timing of the breach and its implications.

The report says the CIA “did not realize the loss had occurred until a year later, when WikiLeaks publicly announced it in March 2017.” Now, what all was happening between March 2016 and a year later? You guessed it: Russiagate!

Even as his own cyber arsenal was getting swiped from under his very nose, CIA chief John Brennan was obsessing about “Russian hackers” of the Democratic National Committee, or Hillary Clinton’s emails, or something – and pushing the bogus ‘Steele Dossier’ alleging Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia, which eventually made it into the infamous ‘Intelligence Community Assessment’ that accused Moscow of meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.

It gets worse. According to the report, “Had the data been stolen for the benefit of a state adversary and not published, we might still be unaware of the loss—as would be true for the vast majority of data on Agency mission systems.”

So if the mythic bogeymen ‘Russian hackers’ had actually wanted to harm the US, they could have just used the CIA’s own, unprotected cyberweapons to stage false flags and wreak havoc across the world? None of which happened, obviously. Yet Brennan and his confederates have been telling everyone for years that the Kremlin wanted to “hack our democracy” by publishing some Democrat emails and posting memes on social media!
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In an irony of ironies, the Trump administration – run by a man who denounced the Iraq war and was falsely accused of working with WikiLeaks and Russia to get elected – is now seeking extradition of Julian Assange from the UK on trumped-up hacking charges related to the 2010 WikiLeaks revelations of US atrocities in Iraq.”

I reckon I don’t agree with the bolded above; for one, Julian’s been accused of ‘seeking hackers via honeytraps’ or some such as I remember it, and has long believed that the 17 charges of ‘Espionage’ against him followed close on the heels of  WikiLeaks’ publication of Vault 7 (and one portion of Vault 8, perhaps).

Malik notes at the end that the alleged leaker, Joshua Schulte, whose trial in March ended with a hung jury, but will be prosecuted again.  His attorneys had argued that the CIA’s security was so lax that anyone on the team, even outsiders, could have accomplished it.

This page details some of the Devilish Capabilities of Vault 7 exploits, but you can read details of the 20+ programs and releases at WikiLeaks’ Vault 7 page.

‘Apple Claims WikiLeaks’ CIA Vault 7 ‘Dark Matter’ iOS And Mac Exploits Are Outdated’, March 24, 2017, hothardware.com

Meanwhile, Thomas Scripps at wsws has reported that Julian was too ill to attend his June 2 administrative hearing by video link from Belmarsh Gitmo.

“His lawyers told the court he was too ill to attend via videolink from Belmarsh prison and was suffering from a “respiratory problem”. Assange’s partner Stella Morris explained later that Assange’s doctor had advised him not to visit the videoconferencing room to minimise his chance of exposure to coronavirus.

Assange has a chronic lung condition and his health has been ruined by years of psychological torture and medical neglect. He is now effectively being tried in absentia, under pain of a potentially fatal contraction of COVID-19.”

His extradition trial is slated to begin in September, if…  Well, anyway, send him as many good vibrations and thought-prayers as you’re able.

(cross-posted from Café Babylon)