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The authenticity of such dumps can not be verified immediately, but since WikiLeaks has long track record of releasing such top secret government documents, the community and governments should take it very seriously.

CIAs Zero-Day Exploits & Ability to Bypass Encrypted Apps

According to initial analysis and press release, the leak sheds light on the CIAs entire hacking capabilities, including its ability to hack smartphones and popular social media messaging apps including the worlds most popular WhatsApp messaging app.

"These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Weibo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the smartphones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied," WikiLeaks said.

The exploits come from a variety of sources, including partner agencies like NSA and GCHQ or private exploit traders, as well as the CIAs specialized unit in its Mobile Development Branch that develops zero-day exploits and malware for hacking smartphones, including iPhones and iPads.

"By the end of 2016, the CIAs hacking division, which formally falls under the agencys Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other weaponized malware," WikiLeaks said.

The agency can remotely activate smartphones cameras and microphones at its will, allowing it to hack social media platforms before encryption can be applied, WikiLeaks claims in the statement on their website.

"Weeping Angel" Attack — Hacking Smart TVs to Spy On Users

Vault 7 also details a surveillance technique — codenamed Weeping Angel — used by the agency to infiltrate smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones.

Samsung smart TVs, which previously drew criticism for their always-on voice command system, are vulnerable to Weeping Angel hacks that place the TVs into a “Fake-Off” mode.

In Fake-Off mode, the TV owner believes it is off when it is actually on, allowing the CIA to record conversations "in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server."

HammerDrill v2.0: A Malware to Steal Data From Air Gapped PCs

The CIAs cyberweapon arsenal also includes a cross-platform malware, dubbed Hammer Drill, that targets Microsoft, Linux, Solaris, MacOS, and other platforms via viruses infecting through CDs/DVDs, USBs, data hidden in images, and other sophisticated malware.

What more interesting? Hammer Drill v2.0 also added air gap jumping ability used to target computers that are isolated from the Internet or other networks and believed to be the most secure computers on the planet.

Besides listing all hacking tools and operations, the documents also include instructions for using those hacking tools, tips on the configuration of Microsoft Visual Studio (which is classified as Secret/NOFORN), as well as testing notes for various hacking tools.

Some of the leaked documents even suggest that the CIA was even developing tools to remotely control certain vehicle software, allowing the agency to cause "accidents" which would effectively be "nearly undetectable assassinations."

For more details on the leak, you can peruse on the WikiLeaks website.

The US intelligence agencies are facing fresh embarrassment after WikiLeakspublished what it described as the biggest ever leak of confidential documents from the CIA detailing the tools it uses to break into phones, communication apps and other electronic devices.

The thousands of leaked documents focus mainly on techniques for hacking and reveal how the CIA cooperated with British intelligence to engineer a way to compromise smart televisions and turn them into improvised surveillance devices.

The leak, named “Vault 7” by WikiLeaks, will once again raise questions about the inability of US spy agencies to protect secret documents in the digital age. It follows disclosures about Afghanistan and Iraq by army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010 and about the National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ by Edward Snowden in 2013.

The new documents appear to be from the CIA’s 200-strong Center for Cyber Intelligence and show in detail how the agency’s digital specialists engage in hacking. Monday’s leak of about 9,000 secret files, which WikiLeaks said was only the first tranche of documents it had obtained, were all relatively recent, running from 2013 to 2016.

The revelations in the documents include:

The CIA declined to comment on the leak beyond the agency’s now-stock refusal to verify the content. “We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents,” wrote CIA spokesperson Heather Fritz Horniak. But it is understood the documents are genuine and a hunt is under way for the leakers or hackers responsible for the leak.

WikiLeaks, in a statement, was vague about its source. “The archive appears to have been circulated among former US government hackers and contractors in an unauthorised manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive,” the organisation said.

The leak feeds into the present feverish controversy in Washington over alleged links between Donald Trump’s team and Russia. US officials have claimed WikiLeaks acts as a conduit for Russian intelligence and Trump sided with the website during the White House election campaign, praising the organisation for publishing leaked Hillary Clinton emails.

Asked about the claims regarding vulnerabilities in consumer products, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said: “I’m not going to comment on that. Obviously that’s something that’s not been fully evaluated.”

Asked about Trump’s praise for WikiLeaks during last year’s election, when it published emails hacked from Clinton’s campaign chairman, Spicer told the Guardian: “The president said there’s a difference between Gmail accounts and classified information. The president made that distinction a couple of weeks ago.”

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, said the disclosures were “exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective”. WikiLeaks has been criticised in the past for dumping documents on the internet unredacted and this time the names of officials and other information have been blacked out.

WikiLeaks shared the information in advance with Der Spiegel in Germany and La Repubblica in Italy.

Edward Snowden, who is in exile in Russia, said in a series of tweets the documents seemed genuine and that only an insider could know this kind of detail. He tweeted: