wikileaks | Today, March 31st 2017, WikiLeaks releases Vault 7 "Marble" -- 676 source code files for the CIA's secret anti-forensic Marble Framework.
Marble is used to hamper forensic investigators and anti-virus
companies from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to the
CIA.
Marble does this by hiding ("obfuscating") text fragments used in CIA malware
from visual inspection. This is the digital equivallent of a specalized
CIA tool to place covers over the english language text on U.S.
produced weapons systems before giving them to insurgents secretly
backed by the CIA.
Marble forms part of the CIA's anti-forensics approach and the CIA's Core Library of malware code. It is "[D]esigned to allow for flexible and easy-to-use obfuscation" as "string
obfuscation algorithms (especially those that are unique) are often
used to link malware to a specific developer or development shop."
The Marble source code also includes a deobfuscator to reverse
CIA text obfuscation. Combined with the revealed obfuscation
techniques, a pattern or signature emerges which can assist forensic
investigators attribute previous hacking attacks and viruses to the CIA.
Marble was in use at the CIA during 2016. It reached 1.0 in 2015.
The source code shows that Marble has test examples not just in
English but also in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi. This
would permit a forensic attribution double game, for example by
pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not
American English, but Chinese, but then showing attempts to conceal the
use of Chinese, drawing forensic investigators even more strongly to the
wrong conclusion, --- but there are other possibilities, such as hiding
fake error messages.
The Marble Framework is used for obfuscation only and does not contain any vulnerabilties or exploits by itself.
