This bit was news to me, never knew that Lockheed owned Sandia but I guess it's not too surprising. That entire sentence still makes my head hurt a bit from trying to figure out how it ever got to the state it's in. Nothing like the CIA being at war with Apple and other manufactures that for god-knows-why care a little bit about the privacy of their customers.Lockheed also owns Sandia Labs, which is funded by the U.S. government, whose researchers have presented Apple findings at the CIA conference.
Lockheed doesn't own Sandia National Laboratory. Lockheed manages Sandia National Laboratory. Sandia's money comes from the DOE, their infrastructure comes from the DOE, their command decisions come from DOE. Saying Lockheed "owns" Sandia is like saying Mariott "owns" your college because they manage the cafeteria. The rest of the article is deeply sloppy - if Sandia is presenting at a CIA conference, that doesn't mean the CIA did the work. If it was done at Sandia, it was most likely DIA money which means this is largely embassy shit. NOT TO SAY that the CIA doesn't root iOS but the last I checked, iOS had all the backdoors the CIA needs. Which, considering you're analyzing 3-year-old data, is a question you should ANSWER not speculate about. I will say this: When the Air Force wanted to fly stolen MiG-21s, they called it "HAVE DONUT." When the NRO wanted to build a satellite to spy on other satellites, they called it "TEAL RUBY." When the CIA wanted a Mach 3 titanium spyplane to replace the U-2, they called it "OXCART." When the Air Force wanted an invisible stealth fighter, they called it "HAVE BLUE." Aurora, if it exists, lies at the heart of a program code-named "SENIOR CITIZEN." I mean, jesus FUCK. Inspector Gadget could come up with better code names than that.Security experts interviewed by The Intercept point out that the SMURF capabilities were already available to U.S. and British intelligence agencies five years ago. That raises the question of how advanced the current capacity to surveil smartphone users is, especially in light of the extensive resources poured into targeting the products of major tech companies.
A WARRIOR PRIDE plugin called NOSEY SMURF allowed spies to remotely and secretly activate a phone’s microphone. Another plugin, DREAMY SMURF, allowed intelligence agents to manage the power system on a phone and thus avoid detection. PARANOID SMURF was designed to conceal the malware in other ways. TRACKER SMURF allowed ultra-precise geolocating of an individual phone.
Okay, that's what I had originally thought and those are two very, very different things (owning vs. managing). Thanks for clarifying that, seems like something the author should have been able to get right.