FBI obtains CIA’s hacking tools through STARBUCKS WIFI
The United States sues ex-employee Joshua Schulte for leaking the CIA hacking toolset Vault 7 and Vault 8. According to public court documents, “because the FBI did not want to download the files onto an existing FBI computer (in part, out of malware concerns) and because they didn’t want to use an FBI IP address, they got a new computer and downloaded all the files at Starbucks.”
“Bloomington FBI”by Amy Guth is licensed under CC BY 2.0
FBI agents said that downloading anything from the Internet was risky. For downloading hacking tools and exploit tools, they took additional measures to avoid endangering internal computers and networks. At the same time, to avoid leak investigations, they did not download using the FBI’s IP address. The agent used a non-governmental computer and went to Starbucks to visit the WikiLeaks website to download the files.
Q. When did you first go to Starbucks to download the leak?
A. In March of 2018.
Q. And how did you download the leak once you were there?
A. I went to the — used an internet browser, went to the WikiLeaks website first. Didn’t really see a quick way to download all the — the large volume of information, so WikiLeaks had also provided a torrent website, which is essentially just — it was about 15 hyperlinks that connected to zip files to download the bulk of the information that they released.
Q. What is a torrent website?
A. It’s a — it looked — just a blank website, but it had 15 hyperlinks, and each time you clicked on one of the links, it asked if you wanted to save the associated zip file. And then I saw there were 15 of those, and then I just downloaded it that way.
Q. And what is a zip file?
A. Zip file is just a way to compress information. So if you want to send a ton of files over an email or kind of website to website, you can use software to compress that information in a more easily storable format.
Q. Why did you go to the torrent instead of downloading it directly from the website?
A. I did — I tried — I perused the website for a little and didn’t see — given the volume of the information, there wasn’t, to my appearance, a good way to capture all of it. And I knew of this — from our investigation I knew of this torrent address, which had been provided by WikiLeaks too, if you wanted to essentially bulk download all the information.
Source: emptywheel
