By ISSIE LAPOWSKY AND LILY HAY NEWMAN.
NEVER ACCUSE WIKILEAKS of getting its timing wrong. Last fall, the group perfectly paced its steady drip of John Podesta’s emails to undermine Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Now, as the capital thrums with chaos, it has unleashed a cloud of confusion that makes it hard for experts to discern the facts and easy for non-experts to see whatever they want.
Days after President Trump baselessly tweetedthat the Obama administration had wiretapped Trump Tower, a theory that first emerged on conservative talk radio, Wikileaks released its latest treasure trove revealing just how extensive the Obama administration’s surveillance capacity was. One nugget of particular interest to Trump supporters: a section titled “Umbrage” that details the CIA’s ability to impersonate cyber-attack techniques used by Russia and other nation states. In theory, that means the agency could have faked digital forensic fingerprints to make the Russians look guilty of hacking the Democratic National Committee.
Nothing in the documents connects the CIA to any Trump Tower wiretaps, which may or may not have ever existed at all anyway. Nor does the leak provide any evidence of a CIA scheme to pin the DNC hack on the Russians. But in the internet age, it doesn’t need to.
Within hours, right wing media outlets like Infowars were already floating the possibility that the CIA had staged the Russian hacks just to undermine President Trump. Alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulis wrote a handy guide for readers on his website, emphasizing the CIA’s ability to imitate the Russians as bullet point No. 1. On Twitter, conservative radio host Bill Mitchell took a more folksy approach:
“I don’t look at it as fact or fiction (although Wikileaks has been exceptionally accurate in the past),” Mitchell said via Twitter direct message. “I see it as just another data point in the mountain of evidence the Obama Admin was neck deep in wiretapping and surveillance.”
Mitchell is right about one thing. The Obama administration was hoarding a lot more information about software security flaws than it ever let on. According to the leaks, the CIA logged iOS and Android vulnerabilities which it could exploit to circumvent encryption, but never shared that information with Americans. The public has a right to be scandalized. “I suspect many will be outraged by this development, and will assume that the CIA used these techniques broadly to surveil American citizens through their TVs, smartphones, computers, and other devices,” says Jeff Williams, chief technology officer and cofounder of Contrast Security.
But while the scope of the intelligence community’s spying capabilities may stun, the news about the country’s ability to forge evidence shouldn’t, because it isn’t really news at all. The tools described in Umbrage are already publicly known and available. One is based on a prevalant espionage virus widely known by hackers called Shamoon, and another adapts malware likely developed by Chinese state-sponsored hackers. The tools can cover hackers’ tracks or make attacks look like they come from other sources. One document shows CIA agents discussing how to prevent Iranian anti-virus software from flagging the tool. As in a murder trial where a dirty cop could plant a weapon to frame an innocent person, intelligence agencies could plant evidence to mislead the US public. Devious? Definitely. But it’s not new. Robust digital forensic investigations already expressly scrutinize this possibility.
“On a network like the internet there is always a greater possibility of somebody impersonating somebody else,” says Darren Hayes, a digital forensics researcher at Pace University.
That may be obvious to security experts. But the American public isn’t made up of security experts—not even close. It’s made up of people who are—rightly—afraid the government is messing with them. Americans struggle to sort through the confusing, often contradictory information speeding toward them. It’s information made more confusing by both its technical details and a polarized media environment that often prioritizes sensation over facts and clear thinking. As long as you’ve got enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt, you’ve got yourself a story. FUD. It’s a helluva drug.
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