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If this week’s WikiLeaks document dump is genuine, it includes a CIA list of the many and varied ways the electronic device in your hand, in your car, and in your home can be used to hack your life.

It’s simply more proof that, “it’s not a matter of if you’ll get hacked, but when you’ll get hacked.” That may be every security expert’s favorite quote, and unfortunately they say it’s true. The WikiLeaks releases include confidential documents the group says exposes “the entire hacking capacity of the CIA.”

The CIA has refused to confirm the authenticity of the documents, which allege the agency has the tools to hack into smartphones and some televisions, allowing it to remotely spy on people through microphones on the devices.

Watch: New Generation of Hackable Internet Devices May Always Be Listening

WikiLeaks also claimed the CIA managed to compromise both Apple and Android smartphones, allowing their officers to bypass the encryption on popular services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram.

For some of the regular tech users, news of the leaks and the hacking techniques just confirms what they already knew. When we’re wired 24-7, we are vulnerable.

“The expectation for privacy has been reduced, I think,” Chris Coletta said, “… in society, with things like WikiLeaks, the Snowden revelations … I don’t know, maybe I’m cynical and just consider it to be inevitable, but that’s really the direction things are going.”

The internet of things

The problem is becoming even more dangerous as new, wired gadgets find their way into our homes, equipped with microphones and cameras that may always be listening and watching.

One of the WikiLeaks documents suggests the microphones in Samsung smart TV’s can be hacked and used to listen in on conversations, even when the TV is turned off.

Security experts say it is important to understand that in many cases, the growing number of wired devices in your home may be listening all the time.

“We have sensors in our phones, in our televisions, in Amazon Echo devices, in our vehicles,” said Clifford Neuman, the director of the Center for Computer Systems Security, at the University of Southern California. “And really almost all of these attacks are things that are modifying the software that has access to those sensors, so that the information is directed to other locations. Security practitioners have known that this is a problem for a long time.”

Neuman says hackers are using the things that make our tech so convenient against us.

“Certain pieces of software and certain pieces of hardware have been criticized because, for example, microphones might be always on,” he said. “But it is the kind of thing that we’re demanding as consumers, and we just need to be more aware that the information that is collected for one purpose can very easily be redirected for others.”

Tools of the espionage trade

The WikiLeaks release is especially damaging because it may have laid bare a number of U.S. surveillance techniques. The New York Times says the documents it examined lay out programs called “Wrecking Crew” for instance, which “explains how to crash a targeted computer, and another tells how to steal passwords using the autocomplete function on Internet Explorer.”

Steve Grobman, chief of the Intel Security Group, says that’s bad not only because it can be done, but also because so-called “bad actors” now know it can be done. Soon enough, he warns, we could find our own espionage tools being used against us.

“We also do need to recognize the precedents we set, so, as offensive cyber capabilities are used … they do give the blueprint for how that attack took place. And bad actors can then learn from that,” he said.

So how can tech-savvy consumers remain safe? Security experts say they can’t, and to remember the “it’s not if, but when” rule of hacking.

The best bet is to always be aware that if you’re online, you’re vulnerable.
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New U.S. solar installations nearly doubled last year, but slowing demand for both residential and large-scale systems, falling panel prices and concerns about looming federal tax reform are still dampening investor appetite for the sector.

Solar installations soared 97 percent to 14.8 gigawatts in 2016, according to a report released Thursday by Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association. The technology is cheaper than ever, with panel prices dropping 40 percent last year, and many utilities procuring solar on the basis of cost alone.

But the dramatic drop in panel prices has hampered solar manufacturers’ profits and ramped up competition for utility-scale contracts among developers, companies said in recent weeks while reporting fourth-quarter results. Add in a slowdown in the residential market, tax reform pushed by U.S. President Donald Trump, climbing interest rates and falling oil prices, and stock market investors remain skittish about solar.

2017 a transition year

Credit Suisse analyst Andrew Hughes said in a client note on Thursday that the key risk to his “outperform” rating on shares of residential solar player Sunrun was “investor sentiment, which in a rising interest rate and falling oil price market obscured by tax policy uncertainty remains tepid.”

The MAC Global Solar Energy index, which tracks shares of solar power companies, slid 43 percent in 2016. The index has recovered to gain nearly 8 percent so far this year but remains 65 percent below its year-ago level.

U.S. module manufacturers and project developers SunPower and First Solar Inc are both viewing 2017 as a transition year for their businesses, they said after reporting in February losses for the fourth quarter of last year.

SunPower Chief Executive Tom Werner in a conference call predicted “intense competition for the forseeable future in mainstream power plants,” adding that some companies were selling panels at below cash cost.

A slowdown is forecast

Indeed, the solar industry report released Thursday forecasts a slowdown in the market this year after last year’s boom. Utility systems accounted for more than 10.5 GW of the total in 2016, but are not expected to exceed 10 GW again until 2021, the report said.

The 2016 boom was largely due to a rush by developers to claim a federal tax credit for solar systems that had been expected to expire at the end of the year. The five-year extension of that credit, however, has allowed projects to be pushed into this year and beyond.

Though Trump has not called for ending tax credits for solar and other renewable energy, he has expressed doubts about the role of clean power sources.

Home installations are growing

On the solar residential side, installations grew 19 percent to 2.6 GW last year, down from 66 percent growth in 2015. Growth has slowed in major markets like California, where many of the households most interested in solar have already put up panels.

Tesla, which acquired residential market leader SolarCity late last year, said last month that it deployed 201 megawatts of solar in the fourth quarter, a more than 20 percent drop from the same period a year earlier.

SolarCity rival Sunrun reported a quarterly profit that topped Wall Street estimates due to cost cuts, but said growth would be substantially slower in 2016. System deployments rose 40 percent in 2016, but are expected to rise just 15 percent this year, Sunrun said.

“While it may be slowing, it is still growing. That is an important piece of the story,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said in an interview. “Some of that resetting is to be expected.”
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