The Atlantic

Hackers Get Back to the Basics

As the costs of complex cyberattacks increase, old-school email tricks are coming back in style.
Source: Helen King / Getty

For the past month, WikiLeaks has regularly released secret CIA documents that reveal the breadth of the agency’s hacking tools. Some seem lifted straight from a spy thriller, like a tool that can turn internet-connected TVs into covert listening devices. The same could be said for complex state-on-state cyberattacks, like the worm that caused Iranian nuclear centrifuges to malfunction in 2009, or electronic strikes sabotaged North Korean missile.

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