The CIA elite hackers were so preoccupied with building cyber weapons they neglected to secure their own systems… With “Vault 7”, the CIA could hack into any device with a suite of tools designed to read and copy data from electronic devices.
Unfortunately their “woefully lax” security procedures allowed those weapons to be stolen by hackers. The leaked tools were developed by the Centre for Cyber Intelligence, where the most sophisticated operatives devised methods of infiltrating hard-to-penetrate networks. However, their security procedures were so poor that the CIA did not known the tools had been stolen. “CIA has moved too slowly to put in place the safeguards that we knew were necessary given successive breaches to other US Government agencies,” a report said.
The research found that “most of our sensitive cyber weapons were not compartmented, users shared systems administrator-level passwords, there were no effective removable media controls, and historical data was available to users indefinitely”.
The task force looking into the breach could not determine the exact size of the breach because the hacking team did not demand the monitoring of who used its network. A rough estimate suggested that a CIA employee stole as much as 34TB of data…
So, this bears the question, are you too busy running your business and might have ignored what really clever people are doing to steal from you? Our Security IT Team is geared up to assist with your queries. Get in touch on 0345 450 9393 or email: tellmemore@pinkconnect.com.
