WikiLeaks reveals largest CIA hacking leak in history; Snapchat gets doused with cold water, and more news.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

WikiLeaks reveals largest CIA hacking leak in history; Snapchat gets doused with cold water, and more news.

Also: Tech companies speak out against Trump’s travel ban and Twitter has an unexpected new rival.

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Here we go again. WikiLeaks says its new series of CIA leaked documents, known as Vault 7, will be the "largest intelligence publication in history." Among many insights, WikiLeaks reports that the agency was able to bypass the encryption on messaging products and microphones on compromised devices. The 8,000 documents paint an ominous picture for the anti-secrecy organization – the leak includes files on how to turn Samsung TVs into surveillance tools and crack into iPhones and Android-based smartphones. Also, if real, all these exploits are now in the hands of every hacker in the world.

Uber, Airbnb, Mozilla, Salesforce, and Lyft were among the first tech companies to speak out against the revised travel ban. In a statement, the embattled Uber said, “Trump's immigration ban is unjust and wrong. We will continue to stand up for those in the Uber community affected.” Brian Chesky, Airbnb's CEO, tweeted: "Barring people from entering our country was wrong the first time around - still wrong..." More than 100 companies opposed the original ban six weeks ago.

Travel ban aside, Uber still has some bigger fish to fry. CEO Travis Kalanick told his staff this morning that he’s hiring a Chief Operating Officer to help him “write the next chapter in our journey.” The announcement comes a week after Kalanick said, "I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up."

#STAT: A new Consumer Technology Association study published by Axios reveals that video viewership has increased more than 30% over the past five years, but almost half of it is being done on smartphones, tablets or laptops.

Twitter has an unexpected new rival – and it comes from Amazon. Twitch, the games-focused streaming site that Jeff Bezos bought in 2014, has just unveiled a news feed that will collect all the real-time social happenings of its network – in other words, a Twitter clone for gamers. The service, which is rolling out to all users over the next few weeks, supports links from services including Vimeo, YouTube, Twitch, Imgur, and Gfycat.

Snap has been doused with cold water, as shares dive for second straight day and analysts say it's overvalued. According to William D. Cohan, author of "Why Wall Street Matters,” Snap Inc. is “a product of the Wall Street IPO hype machine that rewards Wall Street with generous fees and its institutional investor clients with the stock at the IPO price so that they can enjoy the first-day pop.”

Cover Image: A janitor mops the floor at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images).



Poor SnapChat... I thought I'd change the topic of being doomed.

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Adolfo Rico

Author of Nomadic Story Teller : Book 2 Shaman's Enigma Of Light and Shadows The Apocalypse Riders

7 年

Everyone 's hands are ditty. Shadow Ops every country does it and even businesses. Wikileaks what you sow you shall reap.

Ji?í ?ebek

CEO Dialect, s.r.o. ||| Lektor | Konzultant | Kou?: projektovy management, měkké a mana?erské dovednosti, business development

7 年

I honor privacy and security of communication!!! We should understand it as a right for private correspondence. It is disturbing. Everyone watches us ... we are not safe and there is no privacy ... no business, no personal, neither political. Spy agencies experience a great growth ... their clients can be actually anyone who pays enough ... To fight against these horror scenarios, we have developed a new service called hiddenPRIVACY that secures whole transfer (email, files, pictures, etc.) Who wants to GO AGAINST and FIGHT, feel free to contact me and I can explain how ;)

Natasha Khramtsovsky

PhD, Senior Expert at Electronic Office Systems LLP

7 年

Spy agencies are using whatever means available … What’s new in that? That’s their job! :) And they will continue this practice, whether we like it or not. They will keep trying to coerce software and hardware companies and their employees into cooperation. We are living in interesting times, which promise to become even more interesting… In my opinion, CIA (and probably, a number of others) had mindlessly opened the Pandora box, essentially making their own country(-ies) vulnerable as well and potentially harming many modern industries. I wonder about the impact of this on IoT, “smart everything” etc.

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