WikiLeaks Reveals How CIA Infected Apple MacBooks With Malware

The CIA has to contend with even more details on their spying activities with WikiLeaks releasing more documents from its so-called CIA Vault 7. The information mostly deals with the agency’s exploits that it used to access some of Apple’s devices, including the MacBook. The exploit appears quite old and the company had already patched the vulnerabilities. Even so, it’s disturbing to know that the CIA could have accessed the MacBook of Americans at some point.

As Tech Crunch notes, there is no clear evidence to indicate if these exploits are still operation today. In some academic sense, it’s interesting to see just how the CIA managed to infiltrate what were essentially some of the most secure private devices on the market.

One of these exploits is the Sonic Screwdriver v1.0, which was apparently used back in 2012. The hack used peripherals in order to gain access to Macs, specifically, it used Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adaptors to install malware.

Then there is the Triton v1.3, which is an incredibly powerful malware, followed by the Der Starke v1.4, which is essentially the same as Triton, but with considerably more stealth capabilities. DarkSeaSkies v1.0 is one of the oldest exploits pertaining to Macs used by the CIA since it was meant to target the first generation of Apple’s notebooks. As such, it’s probably safe to say that it is no longer functional.

For anyone who wants to go down the full list of exploits that the agency used, WikiLeaks still has the documents on its website. Aside from going through some of the most effective ways for the agency to penetrate MacBooks, the site also provides some rather interesting perspectives when it comes to the implications of the hacks.

The full impact of this news won’t be grasped by experts for some time, MacRumors reports. At this point, the only thing that anyone knows for sure is that the CIA did have some level of access to Apple’s MacBooks.