Google plays down Vault 7 leak, says security is top priority

By Mashable

On Tuesday, WikiLeaks released a large trove of documents, allegedly containing CIA hacking tools and security exploits for all major software platforms, including Android.

Now, Google has publicly responded to the leak, claiming “many” of the vulnerabilities are already fixed.

“As we’ve reviewed the documents, we’re confident that security updates and protections in both Chrome and Android already shield users from many of these alleged vulnerabilities,” Heather Adkins, Director of Information Security and Privacy, told Mashable in a statement. “Our analysis is ongoing and we will implement any further necessary protections. We’ve always made security a top priority and we continue to invest in our defenses.”

Google’s response is almost identical to Apple’s, but isn’t particularly comforting given that the documents WikiLeaks has released are at least a year old, and more are on their way. Neither company disclosed any details on steps they’re actively making to make sure their software and hardware is safer from such exploits in the future.

On Wednesday, the CIA chimed in with an unusually long “no comment” response. According to the agency, the American public should be “deeply troubled by any Wikileaks disclosure designed to damage the Intelligence Community’s ability to protect America against terrorists and other adversaries.”

While the agency did not confirm the documents are authentic, Google and Apple’s response indicate that the software exploits and critical security vulnerabilities that the documents refer to are definitely real.

For the average user, there’s not much to do except update all your devices and software to the latest available version.