by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, March 9, 2017

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said his company will share hacking techniques with major technology companies to help them fix holes the companies have in their software and services.

During an online press conference Thursday, the founder of WikiLeaks said his organization would work with Apple, Google, Microsoft and other technology manufacturers and companies to fix the flaws that allowed the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to hack into phones, computers and other devices.

The vulnerabilities were disclosed Tuesday after thousands of pages were released describing software and technologies used by the CIA to collect data from private citizens. The documents describe a range of tools for gathering information from a variety of networks, from WiFi to Microsoft Skype.

One report said the “document dump,” which did not reveal the code, detailed methods to crash a targeted computer and steal passwords using the autocomplete function on Internet Explorer.

On Wednesday, WikiLeaks suggested that it might help the tech companies in a published Twitter tweet. The tweet asked followers to respond as to whether WikiLeaks should work directly with them.

Voting in the tweet returns the results, as follows: Some 57% voted that WikiLeaks should “yes, make people safe.” Some 36% said “No, they’re the problem,” and 7% chose other (see my reply.) The tweet suggests that 38,778 have voted one way or another.

During a press conference posted to YouTube, Assange said the hacking technologies can bypass encryption to collect data by turning on smartphone microphones, monitor movements and activate cameras.

Dubbed Vault 7 by WikiLeaks, Assange said he wants to disarm the cyber weapons before releasing the code. “The CIA was so careless to produce this material, enormous cyber weapon artisanal at least once, and let it spread,” he said.

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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