Vault 8 | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A former software engineer with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been sentenced to 40 years in prison by the Southern District of New York (SDNY) for transmitting classified documents to WikiLeaks and for possessing child pornographic material. Joshua Adam Schulte, 35, was originally charged in June 2018. He was  found guilty  in July 2022. On September 13, 2023, he was  convicted  on charges of receiving, possessing, and transporting child pornography. In addition to the prison term, Schulte has been sentenced to a lifetime of supervised release. "Schulte's theft is the largest data breach in the history of the CIA, and his transmission of that stolen information to WikiLeaks is one of the largest unauthorized disclosures of classified information in the history of the U.S.," the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ)  said . The sensitive information shared by Schulte included a tranche of  hacking tools and exploits  that were denominated as  Vault 7  and 

Almost two months after releasing details of 23 different secret CIA hacking tool projects under Vault 7 series , Wikileaks today announced a new Vault 8 series that will reveal source codes and information about the backend infrastructure developed by the CIA hackers. Not just announcement, but the whistleblower organisation has also published its first batch of Vault 8 leak, releasing source code and development logs of Project Hive —a significant backend component the agency used to remotely control its malware covertly. In April this year, WikiLeaks disclosed a brief information about Project Hive , revealing that the project is an advanced command-and-control server (malware control system) that communicates with malware to send commands to execute specific tasks on the targets and receive exfiltrated information from the target machines. Hive is a multi-user all-in-one system that can be used by multiple CIA operators to remotely control multiple malware implants used

Imagine a world where the software that powers your favorite apps, secures your online transactions, and keeps your digital life could be outsmarted and taken over by a cleverly disguised piece of code. This isn't a plot from the latest cyber-thriller; it's actually been a reality for years now. How this will change – in a positive or negative direction – as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on a larger role in software development is one of the big uncertainties related to this brave new world. In an era where AI promises to revolutionize how we live and work, the conversation about its security implications cannot be sidelined. As we increasingly rely on AI for tasks ranging from mundane to mission-critical, the question is no longer just, "Can AI  boost cybersecurity ?" (sure!), but also "Can AI  be hacked? " (yes!), "Can one use AI  to hack? " (of course!), and "Will AI  produce secure software ?" (well…). This thought leadership article is about the latter. Cydrill  (a