WASHINGTON — WikiLeaks on Tuesday released thousands of documents that it said described sophisticated software tools used by the Central Intelligence Agency to break into smartphones, computers and even Internet-connected televisions.

If the documents are authentic, as appeared likely at first review, the release would be the latest coup for the anti-secrecy organization and a serious blow to the C.I.A., which maintains its own hacking capabilities to be used for espionage.

The initial release, which WikiLeaks said was only the first part of the document collection, included 7,818 web pages with 943 attachments, the group said. The entire archive of C.I.A. material consists of several hundred million lines of computer code, it said.

Among other disclosures that, if confirmed, would rock the technology world, the WikiLeaks release said that the C.I.A. and allied intelligence services had managed to bypass encryption on popular phone and messaging services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. According to the statement from WikiLeaks, government hackers can penetrate Android phones and collect “audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.”

The source of the documents was not named. WikiLeaks said the documents, which it called Vault 7, had been “circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.”

WikiLeaks said the source, in a statement, set out policy questions that “urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the C.I.A.’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency.” The source, the group said, “wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.”

The documents, from the C.I.A’s Center for Cyber Intelligence, are dated from 2013 to 2016, and WikiLeaks described them as “the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.” One former intelligence officer who briefly reviewed the documents on Tuesday morning said some of the code names for C.I.A. programs, an organization chart and the description of a C.I.A. hacking base appeared to be genuine.

A C.I.A. spokesman, Dean Boyd, said, “We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents.”

WikiLeaks, which has sometimes been accused of recklessly leaking information that could do harm, said it had redacted names and other identifying information from the collection. It said it was not releasing the computer code for actual, usable cyberweapons “until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the C.I.A.’s program and how such ‘weapons’ should be analyzed, disarmed and published.”

Some of the details of the C.I.A. programs might have come from the plot of a spy novel for the cyberage, revealing numerous highly classified — and in some cases, exotic — hacking programs. One, 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.”

The release said the program was developed in cooperation with British intelligence.

If C.I.A. agents did manage to hack the smart TVs, they would not be the only ones. Since their release, internet-connected televisions have been a focus for hackers and cybersecurity experts, many of whom see the sets’ ability to record and transmit conversations as a potentially dangerous vulnerability.

In early 2015, Samsung appeared to acknowledge the televisions posed a risk to privacy. The fine print terms of service included with its smart TVs said that the television sets could capture background conversations, and that they could be passed on to third parties.

The company also provided a remarkably blunt warning: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.”

Another program described in the documents, named Umbrage, is a voluminous library of cyberattack techniques that the C.I.A. has collected from malware produced by other countries, including Russia. According to the WikiLeaks release, the large number of techniques allows the C.I.A. to mask the origin of some of its cyberattacks and confuse forensic investigators.

Assuming the release is authentic, it marks the latest in a series of huge leaks that have changed the landscape for government and corporate secrecy.

In scale, the Vault 7 archive appears to fall into the same category as the biggest leaks of classified information in recent years, including the quarter-million diplomatic cables taken by Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst, and given to WikiLeaks in 2010, and the hundreds of thousands of documents taken from the National Security Agency by Edward J. Snowden and given to journalists in 2013.

In the business world, the so-called Panama Papers and several other large-volume leaks have laid bare the details of secret offshore companies used by wealthy and corrupt people to hide their assets.

Both government and corporate leaks have been made possible by the ease of downloading, storing and transferring millions of documents in seconds or minutes, a sea change from the use of slow photocopying for some earlier leaks, including the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

The National Security Agency and the military’s closely related Cyber Command have the most extensive capabilities for breaking into foreign communications and computer networks and, if required, destroying them. But the C.I.A. maintains a parallel set of programs, mainly for gathering information.

A set of N.S.A. hacking tools, evidently leaked from the agency or stolen in an electronic break-in, was put up for auction on the web last summer by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers. Those tools were among the N.S.A.’s arsenal for penetrating foreign computer networks. At first glance the Vault 7 programs appeared to be aimed at smaller, individual targets rather than large networks.

(Source: New York Times).

Let the obfuscation and the distracting BEGIN!

Oh yes, it is just another one of then conspiracy theories.

What will it take to regain a "private life" ??????

They whoever they are, have always had virtual you files on everybody. Your file starts when you start school and all your behavior goes into it. Every five years they predict what you will be doing over the next five years of your life. Those predictions are very accurate. This goes on and on all through your life. They know you better than you know yourself. I have seen with my own eyes two such files believe it or not. They might tell you that they only target some people and they may well give some people special attention but the truth is they target everybody. What will it take to regain a "private life" is a mystery to me. I think you would need to hack into your virtual you file.

Who is surprised by any of that?

I would be shocked at anyone who had an Internet connected device that didn't know it was vulnerable.

We had peole right here on this board wanting to force Apple to compromise their own system. Made it part of his signature. Lots of people think along the lines of "if your not doing anything wrong what does it matter if they listen"?

So the more shocking part is that more will care what a Kardashian is wearing than this. It will amount to little.

As far as I am concerned I don't debate if Snowden or Wilileaks are correct. They have done what they have done. But look at what is being uncovered, and how little reaction there is to it.

Everyone wants to scream RUSSIAN HACKING, but nobody wants to deal with the information that NONE OF THEM DENY.

Wet live in odd times.

This goes to the heart of the freedoms and rights we are supposed to have.

This amounts to a warrentless search, before the fact. Gathering information, just in case, for what purpose and with what justification?

Still, if you allow it, you sanction it. If the people stand for it, they deserve what they get.

Agreed.

An interesting question is are the people willfully that ignorant, or are they simply a product of an education system that's always had an agenda.

"I don't want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers" - John D. Rockefeller

I don't believe they deserve it ... Sound's like saying someone "Asked for it!!!"

The Patriot Act? The phony Iraq war? Countless billions wasted?

They deserve it.

To be clear, I'm part of "they".

It seems to me that some of this spying stuff is illegal but I doubt the police would want to know.

Off to www.iacpcybercenter.org for tools?

It comes in dark blue and incudes guidelines for paperwork...gotta be legal, right?

A television and radio with tubes.

Just think about what you have access to yourself. GPs. Also you can get GPS tracking devices to install on others. Do you really believe that that is the state of the art? Check out what they use on toll roads today to track you. Do you really believe that is the state of the art? People with just a little computer knowledge can use your wi fi if they are close enough to your home or business. Do you think they are the only ones who can do something like this. That is so benign that it does not even matter. Not that difficult to tap into a person's cell phone and monitor their calls and conversations and that is just for an everyday person with a few electronic gadgets and some know how.

Just a question. Do you believe that all of the wire taps taking place at this instant are legal? Do you feel that those tapping some of the lines really obtained a warrant? Just saying ... I am not a conspiracy nut but I am realistic. We have no concept of what is out there and I include myself in that statement. Many here may disagree with this next statement. But I do believe there is definitely a need to know group only on many things. Most of us here on the Magic Café are not part of that group.

“NSA staff used spy tools on spouses, ex-lovers. Think it takes a warrant? Nope, just somebody willing to do it.”

So anybody with the wherewithal can use these spy tools to their advantage. It gives big companies, the elites power over the powers that be.

That which essentially raises one man above another is knowledge.

Not "can" but has - look back at the movie Se7en (1995) where the detective sells library data... has... now with unified database formats and almost free access to consumer technology.

knowledge is not wisdom.

How long will we find youtube videos made of surveillance clips and cute commentary? Not security camera theater ("alexa - how do I convert to ... and build a ...") but actual (playful I hope) misuse of ill-gotten data?

Manipulation is more profitable than speculation. With the ability that these spy tools give, I bet there isn’t anybody in power that isn’t being leaned on in a J Edgar Hoover like way by somebody that has something on them. Then you also have the aspects of insider trading info and so on. If you are looking to become rich and powerful, these are the tools for you my boy.

That was a movie. You know the difference right?

In the racing game inside info is valuable. Pros develop friends, acquaintances and contacts that include owners, trainers, jockeys, stable hands, and some of the most prominent figures within the horse racing industry simply to get a bit of inside info which can give them a winning edge. Frankly if I had these spy tools I would not hesitate to bug the lot of them in the racing game.