US President Donald Trump gave broad powers to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2018 to carry out offensive cyber operations across the globe.
In an exclusive today, Yahoo News reported that the agency used its newly acquired powers to orchestrate “at least a dozen operations” across the world.
The CIA was already authorized to conduct silent surveillance and data collection, but the new powers allow it to go even further.
“This has been a combination of destructive things – stuff is on fire and exploding – and also public dissemination of data: leaking or things that look like leaking,” a former US government official told Yahoo News.
While the former official didn’t go into the specifics of each operation, Yahoo News reporters believe the CIA’s new powers and modus operandi link it to a series of hack-and-dump incidents that took place primarily in 2019, such as:
Publishing hacking tools (malware) from APT34, an Iranian government hacking unit, on Telegram.
Doxing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence agents on Telegram by revealing their full names, home addresses, phone numbers, and social media profiles.
Dumping details about 15 million payment cards from three Iranian banks linked to Iran’s IRGC.
Hacking two contractors that provide cyber-weapons and surveillance solutions for Russia’s FSB intelligence agency and sharing the data online via a hacktivist group called Digital Revolution.
By Catalin Cimpanu | July 15, 2020
