Contractors Seen as Focus In CIA Leak

Investigators are scrambling to uncover how an apparent trove of Central Intelligence Agency hacking tools ended up on a WikiLeaks website, and the initial focus is likely to fall on outside contractors at the spy agency, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into Tuesday’s unauthorized release of more than 8,000 pages of documents that WikiLeaks says detail how the CIA breaks into computers, smartphones, messaging, applications and even television sets. The release may constitute the largest breach of classified information in the agency’s history.
Those tools were developed by a mix of contractors, CIA employees and the National Security Agency, said current and former intelligence officials who have knowledge of the agency’s work. One person familiar with the matter said that more than a dozen companies work for the CIA formulating and testing hacking tools, and that the bulk of that work is done at a facility in Dulles,Va., not at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Va.
The agency became aware last year that information about its hacking operations had been taken, but officials didn’t know that it would be published on WikiLeaks until Tuesday, this person said. It wasn’t known when the FBI probe began.
The risks from the leak are substantial.

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