Wikileaks claims UK government helped CIA hack Samsung smart TVs

SAMSUNG TV viewers were stalked by a virus in their set called the Weeping Angel, it was claimed yesterday.

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The Sun - SAMSUNG TV viewers were stalked by a virus in their set called the Weeping Angel, it was claimed yesterday.

Software was also allegedly developed by the CIA to hack into people’s smartphones, computers and cars.

Anti-privacy website Wikileaks published 8,761 secret CIA documents, including files from inside its Center for Cyber Intelligence.

Wikileaks claimed the papers — dubbed "Vault 7” — expose how a sinister TV surveillance program was developed by UK and US spy chiefs.

Samsung TVs were said to have been hacked using a computer virus called the Weeping Angel which turned them into a "covert microphone”.

Viewers who believed their TV was off were then recorded by its in-built microphone — with conversations sent to the CIA, it was claimed.

The program was named after terrifying characters in Doctor Who which come to life when not being looked at.

iSPY THE CIA

THE CIA also developed software to hack smartphones — allowing it to keep track of their owners and access any encrypted information, Wikileaks claimed.

It said: "Infected phones can be instructed to send the CIA the user’s geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone’s camera and microphone.”

Wikileaks said: "The attack against Samsung smart TVs was developed in cooperation with the United Kingdom’s MI5.

"After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a ‘Fake-Off’ mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on.

Wikileaks publish thousands of documents it says have come from the CIA's Centre for Cyber Intelligence

"In ‘Fake-Off’ mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the internet to a covert CIA server.”

Wikileaks said the technique had eerie echoes of George Orwell’s nightmarish surveillance novel 1984.

Samsung has an huge range of smart TVs with voice control using microphones.

But in 2015 viewers were warned not to discuss personal information in front of their sets.

A sinister clause in its privacy policy also warned sensitive information was passed on to a US-based communications company.

Wikileaks added that a "substantial library” of digital espionage techniques borrowed from Russia and other countries was in the files, which date from 2013 to 2016.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange called them "exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective”.

A CIA spokesman said yesterday: "We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents.”

The Home Office declined to comment.