WikiLeaks has published thousands of documents which it claims come from the CIA's Centre for Cyber Intelligence and show the US agency was working with Britain's MI5 on covert surveillance techniques.
The release shows the CIA developed malware called 'Weeping Angel' whic infested smart TVs and placed them into 'Fake-Off' mode so the owner falsely believed the TV was off when it was actually on. The television was then transformed into covert a microphone. The Wikileaks files claim the malware was used in an attack alongside MI5.
In a statement on their website, Wikileaks said: "In 'Fake-Off' mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the internet to a covert CIA server."
Wikileaks also claims the CIA "developed numerous attacks to remotely hack and control popular smart phones" including iPhones and Google Android units.
The release of the documents appears to grant an eye-opening look at the intimate details of the US agency's cyber espionage effort.
The dump could not immediately be authenticated, and the CIA did not return repeated messages seeking comment.
WikiLeaks has a long track record of releasing top secret government documents.
One expert who examined the dump, Rendition Infosec founder Jake Williams, told reporters it appears legitimate.
The dump could represent yet another catastrophic breach for the US intelligence community at the hands of WikiLeaks and its allies, which have repeatedly humbled Washington with the mass release of classified material.
Mr Williams added: "There's no question that there's a fire drill going on right now.
"It wouldn't surprise me that there are people changing careers - and ending careers - as we speak."
WikiLeaks, which had been dropping cryptic hints about the release for a month, said in a lengthy statement that the CIA had "recently" lost control of a massive arsenal of CIA hacking tools as well as associated documentation.
The radical transparency organisation said "the archive appears to have been circulated among former US government hackers and contractors in an unauthorised manner" and that one of them "provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive".
Jonathan Liu, a spokesman for the CIA, said: "We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents."
Mr Williams, who has experience dealing with government hackers, said that the voluminous files' extensive references to operation security meant they were almost certainly government-backed.
"I can't fathom anyone fabricated that amount of operational security concern," he said. "It rings true to me.
"The only people who are having that conversation are people who are engaging in nation-state-level hacking."
