WikiLeaks Names CIA Hack After Doctor Who Villain
By Sundi Rose
In the latest WikiLeak scandal, it seems like one of the CIA hacks is named after the creepiest of all villains, Weeping Angels.
As you may have heard, WikiLeaks is at it a again, dumping a lot of unsettling information on us yesterday. According to the latest leak, the US government is (allegedly) doing lot of scary stuff to the American public.
The authenticity of the thousands of documents has not been confirmed by the CIA just yet, but it’s clear that somebody over there at Central Intelligence is a Doctor Who fan. One of the hacks, concerning the ability to take over Samsung devices and listen to their immediate environment was named after Who baddie, Weeping Angels.
Weeping Angels are super scary and unnerving, known for inspiring the phrase, “Don’t Blink,” in the Whovian universe because they only move when no one is looking, turning to stone when someone looks directly at them.
This is a fitting name for this particular breach, as it allows the user to listen and surveil through a TV or cellphone. The New York Times describes it as such, “One program, code-named Weeping Angel, uses Samsung “smart” televisions as covert listening devices. According to the WikiLeaks news release, even when it appears to be turned off, the television “operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the internet to a covert C.I.A. server.”
Although the leaks indicate one of the largest security breaches in US history, it’s made even more alarming by the fact that we don’t know much about who perpertrated the leaks, but if the names of the operations are any clue, we can figure out a little bit about who is inventing them.
The NYT suggests, “The codes names used for projects revealed in the WikiLeaks documents appear to reflect the likely demographic of the cyberexperts employed by the C.I.A. — that is, young and male. There are numerous references to ‘Harry Potter,’ Pokémon and Adderall, the drug used to treat hyperactivity.”
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This latest WikiLeaks thing really does sound like something from a bleak future, so I guess it makes sense it’s originator would invoke the time traveling series. However, it’s a dubious connection, and one we wouldn’t mind going without.