Tag Archive for: exUS

Ex-US intelligence officers admit hacking for UAE

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a tall building in a city: Prosecutors say the men carried out hacking for the UAE without obtaining the required US licences

© Reuters
Prosecutors say the men carried out hacking for the UAE without obtaining the required US licences

Three former US intelligence operatives have admitted to breaking US laws by carrying out hacking operations for the United Arab Emirates.

US prosecutors said the men had agreed to pay $1.7m (£1.2m) to resolve charges of computer fraud, access device fraud and violating export controls.

They worked for an unnamed UAE-based firm and allegedly hacked into servers, computers and phones around the world.

There was no immediate comment from the men or Emirati officials.

Earlier this year, the UAE was accused of using malware from the Israeli company NSO Group to spy on journalists, dissidents and rival governments.

The US justice department said the former intelligence officers – US citizens Marc Baier and Ryan Adams, and former US citizen Daniel Gericke – initially worked for a US company that provided cyber services to a UAE government agency in compliance with the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

The regulations require companies to obtain pre-approval from the US government prior to releasing information regarding a hacking operation and to agree not to target US citizens and permanent residents or US entities.

In 2016, the three men joined the UAE-based company as senior managers and began carrying out hacking operations for the benefit of the UAE government without obtaining the required licences from the US, according to the justice department.

Over the next three years, it alleged, they supervised the creation of two similar sophisticated “zero-click” computer hacking and intelligence gathering systems – “Karma” and “Karma 2” – that could compromise a device without any action by the target and allowed users to access tens of millions of devices made by a US technology company that was not identified.

The justice department said employees of the company had leveraged the systems to illegally obtain and use credentials for online accounts issued by US companies, and to obtain unauthorised access to computers and mobile phones around the world, including in the US.

“Hackers-for-hire and those who otherwise support such activities in violation of US law…

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3 ex-U.S. intelligence operatives admit to hacking for UAE

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Sept. 15 (UPI) — Three former U.S. intelligence and military operatives have admitted to being hired by the United Arab Emirates for whom they committed sophisticated cybercrimes for, the Justice Department said.

In a statement published Tuesday, the Justice Department said the three mercenary hackers Marc Baier, 49, Ryan Adams, 34, and Daniel Gericke, 40, agreed to pay $1.685 million to resolve the department’s investigation into their alleged crimes of violating U.S. export control, computer fraud and access devices fraud laws.

According to court documents, the trio used “illicit, fraudulent and criminal means,” including hacking systems, to gain unauthorized access to protected computers in the United States and elsewhere to steal information, material, documents, records, data and personal identifying information for the UAE.

Prosecutors said the three men lacked the proper license from the U.S. government to conduct this sort of work, which they continued to do despite receiving repeated warnings.

According to the agreement to drop the charges, the men admit responsibility for their actions and agree to cooperate with the United States, accept employment restrictions and pay the monetary penalty. Baier is to pay $750,000, Adams $600,00 and Gericke $335,000, it said.

Court documents said that after leaving the military, the men began working for an unnamed U.S. company that provided cyber services to a UAE government agency in compliance with U.S. rules. However, in January 2016 the defendants joined an unnamed UAE company as senior managers of a team called Cyber Intelligence-Operations.

Between January 2016 and November 2019, the three men and other employees at the company “expanded the breadth and increased the sophistication” of the hacking operations they provided the UAE, including creating two zero-click hacks named KARMA and KARMA 2 to infect devices without the users interacting with the malware, according to prosecutors.

The operations “leveraged servers in the United States belonging to a U.S. technology company … to obtain remote, unauthorized access to any of the tens of millions of smartphones and mobile devices utilizing” a unnamed U.S. company’s…

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North Korea crisis: We do NOT have the luxury of time ex-US official warns amid WW3 fears

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  1. North Korea crisis: We do NOT have the luxury of time ex-US official warns amid WW3 fears  Express.co.uk

  2. Iran and North Korea: Dangerous partners in nuclear proliferation  The Hill

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