WikiLeaks says it will help Silicon Valley defend against CIA hacking
http://www.latimes.com/business/technol ... story.html
WikiLeaks will work with technology companies to help defend them against the CIA's hacking tools, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Thursday. The approach sets up a potential conflict between Silicon Valley firms eager to protect their products and an agency stung by the radical transparency group's disclosures. In an online news conference, Assange acknowledged that some companies had asked for more details about the CIA cyberespionage toolkit whose existence he purportedly revealed in a massive leak published Tuesday.
"We have decided to work with them, to give them some exclusive access to some of the technical details we have, so that fixes can be pushed out", Assange said. Once tech firms had patched their products, he said, he would release the full data of the hacking tools to the public. Assange said some of the small fixes could be issued by tech companies "potentially in two to three days", but problems that affected more critical aspects of computer codes, such as those in televisions or phones, could take a lot longer.
So far, the CIA has declined to comment directly on the authenticity of the leaked documents. On Thursday a CIA spokesman said Assange "is not exactly a bastion of truth and integrity", but he reiterated an agency statement issued Wednesday that suggested the release had equipped adversaries "with tools and information to do us harm". Assange began his news conference with a dig at the agency for losing control of its cyberespionage arsenal, saying that all the data had been kept in one place. "This is a historic act of devastating incompetence", he said, adding: "WikiLeaks discovered the material as a result of it being passed around".
Assange said the technology was nearly impossible to keep under wraps - or under control. "There's absolutely nothing to stop a random CIA officer or even a contractor from using the technology", Assange said. "The technology is designed to be unaccountable, untraceable; it's designed to remove traces of its activity". On Tuesday, after WikiLeaks posted the documents, public advocacy groups raised questions about whether the CIA was doing enough to tell technology companies about vulnerabilities in their products.
Source: LA Times