Breach, Threat Intelligence, Data Security

CIA Director Pompeo says WikiLeaks will ‘take down America’

CIA Director Mike Pompeo continued to expressed disdain for WikiLeaks a day after the organization published more Vault7 documents from CIA contractor Raytheon Blackbird Technologies for the "UMBRAGE Component Library" (UCL) project.

Raytheon Blackbird Technologies reportedly analyzed malware attacks in the wild for the CIA acting as a technology scout for the Remote Development Branch (RDB) of the agency.

The documents mostly contained proof of concept ideas and assessments for malware attack vectors - partly based on public documents from security researchers and private enterprises in the computer security field, according to the July 19 leak.

Some of the linked documents contained information purportedly concerning Symantec, FireEye, Malwarebytes,  McAfee, and Rombertik. The documents also cover tools produced the Hacking Team as well as the Russian HammerToss malware and other surveillance themed files.

"WikiLeaks will take down America any way they can," Pompeo said in a conversation with New York Times columnist Bret Stephens.

When questioned on President Trump's comments stating “I love WikiLeaks” during the campaign when he praised the organization for releasing condemning information about his then opponent, Pompeo expressed a different opinion. “I don't love WikiLeaks,” Pompeo said.

In June 2016 when Pompeo was still a Republican House lawmaker, he tweeted a link to documents obtained by WikiLeaks from the Democratic National Committee.

Pompeo has since taken a stronger stance against the organization since he was sworn into his most recent role and said he never viewed WikiLeaks as a "credible source of information" when questioned during his confirmation hearing and earlier this year referring to them as a as a "hostile intelligence service." 

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