
Ask HN: Were the latest Wikileaks releases really new information? - marmot777
I keep seeing articles claiming that &quot;cyber security&quot; experts are alarmed (implying surprised) by the latest WL release, and articles claiming that the WL release has re-ignited tensions between Washington and Silicon Valley.<p>I&#x27;m not an expert but as someone with a little bit of familiarity with InfoSec, the latest WL release didn&#x27;t contain anything surprising. What I&#x27;ve seen so far seems to be information that&#x27;s already known to be true or widely assumed to be true (e.g., the capability to compromise endpoints). My understanding is efen the source code has been out there for a couple of years.<p>If I&#x27;m right then why would this substantially increase tension between Washington and Silicon Valley beyond a couple news cycles?<p>It is very possible that my knowledge of InfoSec is so weak that I don&#x27;t even know when to be surprised...
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r721
Yeah, it seems many security researchers are not impressed:

Bruce Schneier: "One, there is absolutely nothing illegal in the contents of
any of this stuff. It's exactly what you'd expect the CIA to be doing in
cyberspace."

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/03/more_on_the_c...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/03/more_on_the_cia.html)

Robert Graham: "Most of this dump is child's play, simply malware/trojans
cobbled together from bits found on the Internet."

[http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/03/some-comments-on-
wikileaks...](http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/03/some-comments-on-wikileaks-
ciavault7.html)

the grugq‏: "The article sadly misses the point about how lame the contents
are. The only interesting story is "why" not "what.""

[https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/839183932763471872](https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/839183932763471872)

Nicholas Weaver: "The actual data dumped by Wikileaks isn't really that
significant, but some entertainment. That it was dumped at all is Yuge."

[https://twitter.com/ncweaver/status/839179237433176065](https://twitter.com/ncweaver/status/839179237433176065)

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Eridrus
Journalists need to write something and tend to sensationalise everything.

The Intercept has a sane take on the level of "surprisingness":
[https://theintercept.com/2017/03/07/cia-has-an-impressive-
li...](https://theintercept.com/2017/03/07/cia-has-an-impressive-list-of-ways-
to-hack-into-your-smartphone-wikileaks-files-indicate/)

Most of it is just confirmation of things people have known is possible, but
never caught in the wild.

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jakekovoor
Here's the latest from Wikileaks

Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed

[https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/](https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/)

