Alwaght- China has demanded that the US halts its hacking practices t following a WikiLeaks release which exposes the CIA’s extensive hacking capabilities and lists Chinese routers as targets.
“We urge the US side to stop listening in, monitoring, stealing secrets and internet hacking against China and other countries,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said during a Thursday news conference.
The demand by China comes after the Vault 7 publication released by WikiLeaks on Tuesday listed routers supplied by Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE as targets of CIA hacking, along with Taiwanese supplier Zyxel.
The release reportedly reveals details of the CIA’s “global covert hacking program,” including “weaponized exploits” used in company products, including “Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.”
A total of 8,761 documents were released in the first part of the series, with WikiLeaks assuring that only one percent of its trove was published in the first installment of Vault 7.
Tang Wei, a cybersecurity engineer and the marketing director of Beijing-based Security Company Rising, said these seemingly minor antidotes in the WikiLeaks files might contain some valuable information.
“The American cyberwar machine has been operating under the hood and it is very difficult for an outsider to get a glimpse of what happens inside an operation center. These documents revealed the tip of an iceberg,” he said.
Tang said the WikiLeaks document also confirmed the suspicion that the CIA and other US government agencies had recruited a number of Chinese-speaking hackers to assist in and accelerate China-related operations.
