Vault 7

Vault 7 is a series of documents that WikiLeaks began to publish on 7 March 2017, detailing the activities and capabilities of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare. The files, dating from 2013 to 2016, include details on the agency's software capabilities, such as the ability to compromise cars, smart TVs, web browsers including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera, the operating systems of most smartphones including Apple's iOS and Google's Android, and computer operating systems including Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux. A CIA internal audit identified 91 malware tools out of more than 500 tools in use in 2016 being compromised by the release. The tools were developed by the Operations Support Branch of the CIA. The Vault 7 release led the CIA to redefine WikiLeaks as a "non-state hostile intelligence service". In July 2022, former CIA software engineer Joshua Schulte was convicted of leaking the documents to WikiLeaks, and in February 2024 sentenced to 40 years of imprisonment on espionage counts, and to 80 months (6.6 years) of imprisonment for child pornography counts.