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| #Vault7: WikiLeaks reveals CIA ‘Scribbles’ tool spies on Microsoft Office docs | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| A user manual describing a CIA project known as ‘Scribbles’ has been published by WikiLeaks. The tool allows the agency to tag and track documents created using Microsoft Office software. | A user manual describing a CIA project known as ‘Scribbles’ has been published by WikiLeaks. The tool allows the agency to tag and track documents created using Microsoft Office software. |
| The project is purportedly designed to allow the embedding of ‘web beacon’ tags into documents “likely to be stolen” by foreign adversaries, according to a press release from the whistleblowing organization on Friday. | |
| Commonly used in online analytics, web beacons are often embedded invisibly into web pages or emails to track user activity, including monitoring when and where a particular document was opened. | |
| WikiLeaks notes that the latest iteration of the tool is dated March 1, 2016 – indicating it was used up until at least last year – and was seemingly meant to remain classified until 2066. | |
| READ MORE: ‘Top secret CIA virus control system’: WikiLeaks releases ‘Hive’ from #Vault7 series | |
| The ‘Scribbles’ User Guide explains how the tool generates a random watermark for each document, inserts that watermark into the document, saves all such processed documents in an output directory, and creates a log file which identifies the watermarks inserted into each document. | |
| Scribbles can watermark multiple documents in one batch and is designed to watermark several groups of documents. | |
| The tool was successfully tested on Microsoft Office versions 1997-2016 and documents that are not locked forms, encrypted, or password protected. | |
| The guide notes that the program has a number of flaws. | |
| Significantly, the watermarks were tested only with Microsoft Office applications so if the “targeted end-user” opened them with an alternative application, such as OpenOffice, they may be able to see the watermarks and URLs, potentially exposing the fact that the document is being tracked. |