Contributed by Jim Hayes

WikiLeaks has published a new tranche of documents that have been dubbed Vault 7 and they are from the Center for Cyber Intelligence of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

They uncover the extent of cyber espionage that has been going on.

The release of 8,761 documents and files, is the biggest release of CIA documents and a massive arsenal of hacking tools, is the biggest loss ever suffered by the spy agency and is likely to prove to be a major catastrophe. It is bigger than the Edward Snowden NSA leaks.

In response, Jonathan Liu, a spokesman for the CIA, said: “We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents.”

As the leak began to sink in, Julian Assange’s Facebook and Periscope video streams were attacked and a scheduled press conference to formally announce the leak of the first batch had to be postponed. No major damage was caused. WikiLeaks continued through a prepared contingency plan.

Because of WikiLeak’s action, we have bee provided with an insider view on the CIA’s purported global hacking force and cyber interception tactics.

Here are parts of a WikiLeaks press release.

“The first full part of the series, “Year Zero”, comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.

“Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA.

“Year Zero” introduces the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of “zero day” weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones”.

Among the releases,  the techniques the CIA employs, to control and exfiltrate data from smartphones and other devices, IOS and Android , dating from between 2014 and 2016.

Another revelation, is the  targeting smart TV’s under a program codenamed  “Weeping Angel”. According to WikiLeaks, this makes the television “operate as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server.” The program can also be used to extract personal credentials.

Other tools can be used to erase erasing the IP addresses and other identifying information from targeted devices.

Particularly ominous is that the CIA has developed the means to take over  microchips that control cars, medical equipment and other devices.