18 ms·
The UAE’s secret hacking team of U.S. mercenaries
- mtw 8y agoI find it interesting that this ex-NSA operative casually explains her job was probing China computer systems and then assessing what data can be stolen from China. But then publicly the USA point fingers at Huawei or Chinese government from doing the same. Same also UAE vs the USA. If the NSA is doing it, why wouldn't any Middle East country be able to hack other citizens/companies/governments? Sounds like a band of thieves bad-mouthing other thieves
- dragonwriter 8y ago> I find it interesting that this ex-NSA operative casually explains her job was probing China computer systems and then assessing what data can be stolen from China Yes, that's literally what a signals intelligence service is about. > But then publicly the USA point fingers at Huawei or Chinese government from doing the same. Uh, yeah, countries have always done espionage and punished espionage committed against them, and, particularly, vilified entities that are overtly something other than an intelligence service that are caught acting as an agent of hostile intelligence services. > If the NSA is doing it, why wouldn't any Middle East country be able to hack other citizens/companies/governments? They are clearly able to do it.
- tareqak 8y agoAn honest question: if a foreign country had sufficient evidence that U.S. intelligence services committed signals espionage against them / stole state secrets / stole IP, then would U.S. media (mainstream or alternative) be allowed to report on the incident? Would U.S. media report on incident even if they are allowed?
- roywiggins 8y agoThe US media reported on Snowden extensively, so: probably?
- SubiculumCode 8y agoYes. The media could report on that.The U.S. reports on all sorts of things that the elite or intelligence services would rather not have revealed.
- golem14 8y agohttps://www.google.com/search?q=belgacom+hacking https://www.google.com/search?q=belgacom+hacking True, it was GCHQ not NSA, but it's similar enough.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago" be allowed to report on the incident?" Yes. Other nations would be reporting it generally, so it'd be absurd to suppress public information. Now, it might be 'spun' in the national interest, in a time of war or something like that. But if the US Government stile IP from Didi, handed it over to Apple execs, then blocked Didi from doing business in the US thus giving Apple a monopoly there ... it would be news. The US gov. plays geopolitical games, and maybe does some political interference 'for business' - but is not stealing trade secrets to hand over to arbitrary US businesses. I think the US would steal the plans for a new 'jet engine' or weapon system however. Also consider that for really valuable stuff, the US pays a lot of money in the private sector. US companies pay top dollar for 'top talent' which is a lot easier than stealing.
- dillondoyle 8y agoI think a clear difference is the US generally does not spy with the purpose of giving US corporations insider secrets to enable US corps to copy directly their foreign competitors.
- throwaway232343 8y agoUh, they totally did. To French companies, to Brazilian companies, and passed it on for advantage in negotiations and contract bidding: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-brazil-oil-petrobras https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-bra... https://sputniknews.com/politics/201506301024010800/ https://sputniknews.com/politics/201506301024010800/
- rndmize 8y agoNothing in either article you linked says anything about passing information to US companies.
- monocasa 8y agoThose are bad examples they gave, but the point is still valid. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/29/wikileaks_docs_show_nsa_vs_france/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/29/wikileaks_docs_show... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-snowden-germany/snowden-says-nsa-engages-in-industrial-espionage-tv-idUSBREA0P0DE20140126 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-snowden-germany/...
- nyolfen 8y agoneither of these suggest they passed information to US companies
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
- diminoten 8y agoI think the big/only difference between us and China in this regard is that the US government don't do this to Chinese companies and then take those secrets and give them to American companies. We have a set of rules we follow and China has different rules, rules that violate ours, so we point fingers.
- vkou 8y ago> I think the big/only difference between us and China in this regard is that the US government don't do this to Chinese companies and then take those secrets and give them to American companies. How do you know this does not happen in defense-related industries?
- stone-monkey 8y agoNot OP. Also not saying it doesn't happen, but the incentive structures are different in both countries. A lot of private industry in China is defacto government owned due how business works there - You can't build a business there to scale without having ingratiated yourself to some higher ups of the party at some level. While the same thing may or may not happen in the US, we also have the option of being able to grow obscenely large without being tight knit with the government - See Facebook and a large chunk of Silicon Valley. It's commonly touted that the purpose of forcing foreign companies to submit their IP to a Chinese owned branch as a prerequisite to conducting business in China is so the government can exfiltrate foreign IP back to China. The government isn't in the business of building out all these industries themselves - they anoint some select chosen in their cabal who profits enormously from getting the blessing of their local party members, while sending generous kickbacks their way. There's some Chinese billionaire who talks about it on YouTube - I can't recall his name off the top of my head.
- hindsightbias 8y agoAssessment of foreign military equipment/tech bought (or stolen) by the US is highly dependent on defense contractors. There is less of an incentive for the US to steal commercial tech, but that would probably change if "our tech" fell behind "their tech."
- sonnyblarney 8y ago" But then publicly the USA point fingers at Huawei or Chinese government from doing the same." Security related espionage and industrial espionage are entirely different things. They overlap a little bit when it relates to 'defence industry' - but the US is not actively stealing stuff from DiDi and handing it off to Apple whereas the inverse is true.
- ngcc_hk 8y agoAnother angle is whether you want the backdoor in your core infrastructure. So far other than the fbi cases and the trade issues, the concentration is on the 5g backend. It is not bad mouthing. It is a real worry. Not just American. The Microsoft has to show source code I read in news has to demo it to china. But china has no choice here. But when it happens to America, natural course of action I think.
- tomatotomato37 8y agoContrary to whatever politicians publicly say, nation-state corporate espionage isn't a moral problem, it's a realpolitik trade problem. The only reason the world respects our IP system is because we signed onto a shitton of trade agreements, otherwise no one, not the Chinese, the US, or the Soviets, has any obligation not to sneak into the other country and steal everything not nailed down. In that case, might as well root for whoever the home team is
- cronix 8y agoThat's the age old game though. We all know everybody is hacking and spying on everybody else. We only get mad about it when they get caught. Until then, game on. I find it laughable when the US "attributes" an attack to a foreign power, and the media just laps it up and preaches it as gospel. In the vault-7 release on wikileaks, the NSA has a pretty nifty tool to....manipulate packets to make them look like they are coming from a different source, and insert comments in 4 foreign languages. We are asked to believe that Russias most talented hackers, somehow are stupid enough to leave comments in Acrylic that mentions the head of the GRU. Yes, I'm sure they did that. Just like our payloads have comments attributing our code to Obama or Trump. The "stolen" emails were "downloaded" at 3x the rate of the internet connection going to the email server. It happens to match the rate of USB2, and most likely a USB stick was used to copy the emails directly from the server. Here's a talk by Ray McGovern (ex cia), which lays the case out. Don't take his word for it. Research the facts he claims. I kind of poo-poo'd him at first. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngIKjpucQh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngIKjpucQh8 Here's an article describing the NSA's "Marble Framework". Go to the vault and look at their own words from the NSA's docs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/wikileaks-latest-release-of-cia-cyber-tools-could-blow-the-cover-on-agency-hacking-operations/2017/03/31/63fc3616-1636-11e7-833c-503e1f6394c9_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/wikil... Vault-7 NSA's "Marble Framework": https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/page_14588467.html https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/page_14588467.html
- sayno3 8y agoI don't see why anyone would even need to research this. How could someone be so stupid to believe all the "hacking code" made direct cultural references to the source?
- lawnchair_larry 8y agoVault 7 had nothing to do with NSA.
- wp381640 8y ago> somehow are stupid enough to leave comments in Acrylic compilation artifacts and strings in malware - very common method of researching attribution and most tools pull them as IoCs even if you write tools to strip or null them out all it takes is a single OPSEC failure and you've leaked this info, and we see those all the time should also be noted that the build paths was not the only attribution indicator in that case
- aedron 8y ago> But then publicly the USA point fingers at Huawei or Chinese government from doing the same. The only thing remarkable about this is the mechanism: Mainstream media mouthpiecing these viewpoints. Surely, they know better. But they are obviously willing tools.
- AshwinDurairaj 8y agoAw
- saagarjha 8y ago> “I don’t think Americans should be doing this to other Americans,” she told Reuters. “I’m a spy, I get that. I’m an intelligence officer, but I’m not a bad one.” I’m not sure if the article is cherry picking quotes to make Stroud sound horrible, but I’m very concerned by the viewpoint she espouses. It’s ok for Americans to target 16 year olds on Twitter, but not other Americans? This makes her a “good spy”?
- SHAKEDECADE 8y agoSounds like a case of the ‘ol Spy Vs. Spy.
- diminoten 8y agoHonestly? Maybe. I'm not sure how I feel, but I'm open to this possibly being okay.
- sremani 8y agofor example a spy sabotages a train track to sabotage a weapons program and some kids die because of lack of transportation to nearest city hospital, does that make the SPY a bad one? Trying to interject personal morality into the grey area of Intelligence and counter-intelligence is not a fruitful conversation. That does not mean, we should not try, but its not cut and dry.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 8y ago
- creaghpatr 8y ago> “There’s a moral obligation if you’re a former intelligence officer from becoming effectively a mercenary for a foreign government,” said Bob Anderson, who served as executive assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation until 2015. But not a legal one? I can see intel alumni being allowed to go into private sector work but surely not where there's a geopolitical conflict of interest?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- awakeasleep 8y agoTo paraphrase Zuckerberg, >A moral obligation without a corresponding legal obligation is a Business Opportunity
- pretendscholar 8y agoVery Ferengi
- sgpl 8y agoReading this article made me really frustrated. As an individual I can't do much about government sanctioned surveillance but at least I'd have hoped that people such as Stroud that worked for US intelligence would have a stronger moral compass than what the article describes. She was comfortable targeting human rights activists (such as Ahmed Mansoor who are working hard to make a positive change in the world) on behalf of a country with a horrible track record of human rights / etc. But she felt "sick to her stomach" when these targeted individuals were US citizens? How can she justify that citizenship is the differentiator between what's right and wrong? > Stroud said her background as an intelligence operative made her comfortable with human rights targets as long as they weren’t Americans. > Prominent Emirati activist Ahmed Mansoor, given the code name Egret, was another target, former Raven operatives say. For years, Mansoor publicly criticized the country’s war in Yemen, treatment of migrant workers and detention of political opponents. > Mansoor was convicted in a secret trial in 2017 of damaging the country’s unity and sentenced to 10 years in jail. He is now held in solitary confinement, his health declining, a person familiar with the matter said. > She found the work exhilarating. “It was incredible because there weren’t these limitations like there was at the NSA. There wasn’t that bullshit red tape,” she said. “I feel like we did a lot of good work on counterterrorism.” > “I was sick to my stomach,” she said. “It kind of hit me at that macro level realizing there was a whole category for U.S. persons on this program.”
- rhcom2 8y agoHonestly, it just sounds like good old fashioned xenophobia.
- ashwinaj 8y agoWell put. I grew up in the UAE where xenophobia/racism is rampant. If you really want to see white privilege in action and more shockingly, out in the open, move to any Arab country.
- awakeasleep 8y agoYou're asking a fundamentally interesting question that has horrifying implications. What makes someone OK with murder? How do you flip someone from a civilian mindset of more or less 'love thy neighbor' to a soldier mindset of 'kill the bad guy'? In rough terms there are a lot of simple answers, like 'portray the other as a threat to your family/way of life/values' But here we're talking about someone that believes human rights workers are valid targets unless they have her same passport. That makes the origins of the belief much harder to imagine.
- headsoup 8y agoAll this article does is highlight the soldier mentality of accepting instruction blindly as to what is good/bad. It seems child-like when read as the article presented it.
- roel_v 8y agoI know some people who moved from the 'infosec underground' in Western Europe to the Middle East 10-ish years ago, nowadays they mostly don't have contact any more with anyone from 'back then'. But I've wondered - how much would one make in such a role? It doesn't seem like it would be a 'lifer' job, so you'd have to be looking at high 6, potentially 7 figures to make it worth while. But from what I could tell back when these people I knew would still post a picture here or there - it wasn't even close to that. It would be something that would let them live a comfortable middle class life style there at best. So, anyone with some gossip from that world care to comment?
- resters 8y agoSo to put this in perspective... When the US intervenes in other nations there is typically a rival political faction that the US is aligned with: - The US funds rival political groups of many foreign regimes abroad. The important thing is to have the group established. From there it can exist in semi-dormancy until it is needed. - The rival political groups then hire former US intelligence agency employees as consultants. - The rival political groups then hire former US officials as lobbyists. - US political figures openly accept indirect campaign funding from foreign lobbying groups.
- mzs 8y agothe other story about this, more of the how https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-spying-karma-exclusive/exclusive-uae-used-cyber-super-weapon-to-spy-on-iphones-of-foes-idUKKCN1PO19S https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-spying-karma-exclusive...
- ycombinatoracct 8y agoKarma might be related to this: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2016/03/21/attack-of-week-apple-imessage/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2016/03/21/attack-o...
- uneasy-sausage 8y agoI'm confused here - they used US cyber Intel trade techniques and services a foreign soverignty, where is the line between treason and gun for hire? And they we're employed by a US staffing agency.
- HashThis 8y agoIf any US citizen that has worked at the NSA, CIA or a contractor for them goes and spies on US citizens for a foreign government must be driven into prison. > Stroud said her background as an intelligence operative made her comfortable with human rights targets as long as they weren’t Americans. > She found the work exhilarating. “It was incredible because there weren’t these limitations like there was at the NSA. There wasn’t that bullshit red tape,” she said. “I feel like we did a lot of good work on counterterrorism.” These are violations of ethics. They can quickly become a betrayal of US citizens. I think these former INTL workers don't understand that a wave of wrath is coming from US citizens that the shit pulled by INTL services isn't okay.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- markdown 8y agoUS citizens and companies don't just provide tech support like this to the worlds despots, they also provide propaganda expertise. Look into Qorvis/MSLGroup.
- hamiltont 8y agoPotentially related anecdote: A few years ago I attended a trade show in UAE. At the time I was a R&D director for a mobile security company. Recruiting was blatant, I was (verbally) offered >400k base + signing to live in UAE for one year. Declined, but my partner and I definitely had a conversation about it. Even now, and especially at that time, that was a life-changing amount of money. However, it seemed to me that the company was a government-backed org with goals of attracting cyber talent, training local talent, and IMO weaponizing that knowledge. It also seemed that the company had an endless pit of money. I wonder how much these folks accepted...
- the_other_guy 8y agokinda funny that UAE and Saudi Arabia have always had blatant human rights abuses including funding terrorism in places like Syria but nobody raise a brow until they isolated Qatar roughly 2 years ago, then suddenly the abuses are appearing out of nowhere and ironically Qatar is is the only country that's worse than both of them. Also never underestimate Qatar's sleeping Islamist cells pretending to be liberals and even SJWs in the major news media nowadays
- aliswe 8y agoIt's interesting that you mention that last bit. As a matter of fact, it's got a lot to do with left and right political ideology here. Possibly inflammatory post coming your way ... Qatar, Turkey, Iran, Syria (at least historically, maybe not so much with the current Al-Asad), old Libya (Qaddafi) are very leftist, and thus get along better with left-ish media and left-leaning governments like France and Canada. Also the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir, even ISIS is (extremely) leftist and there are allegiances and/or sentiments shared between all these. Saudi Arabia, UAE, are very rightist. And thus they get along better with USA, Russia and also even Israel.
- sn41 8y agoAlso the proxy war between UAE+Saudi on one side against Iran that is going on Yemen. Yemenis are poor, and their nation is being ruined. This reminds me of Eurasia vs Eastasia in far-off Malabar in George Orwell's 1984. Still no great condemnation from world leaders.
- mirimir 8y agoIt's a sobering story. And it's ironic that Edward Snowden triggered her move from US to UAE operations. But she started out in the US military: > She spent a decade at the NSA, first as a military service member from 2003 to 2009 and later as a contractor in the agency for the giant technology consultant Booz Allen Hamilton from 2009 to 2014. And that's some programming that you don't shake off lightly. So it's not at all surprising that her break with UAE was triggered by operations against Americans: > “I don’t think Americans should be doing this to other Americans,” she told Reuters. “I’m a spy, I get that. I’m an intelligence officer, but I’m not a bad one.” That's how soldiers are trained to think.
- yesenadam 8y agoSo many of the comments on this page restored my faith in HN, people from the US and humanity, which was severely disturbed only this morning by the many horrifying comments on the "Stealing the Enemy's Urban Advantage: The Battle of Sadr City" page[0]. Thank you people! Inspiring stuff. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19045578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19045578
- bawana 8y agoThe British used mercenaries in the revolutionary war. Though these men came from Hesse, half stayed behind and ultimately became 'American'. Later America allowed its pilots to 'become' mercenaries to fight for China against Japan (The Flying Tigers https://www.history.com/news/6-legendary-mercenary-armies-from-history https://www.history.com/news/6-legendary-mercenary-armies-fr...) Were the Hessians turned American considered British spies later? Were the American pilots less trustworthy later? It is impossible to generalize about mercenaries except to say they are a fact of life where people will take up the baton to hurt others for pay. The only way to prevent the atrocities that continue to plague our 'civilized' world is to treat people like the 'children' they are. Put them in a playpen and take away their toys. The equivalent is to build walls around every center of conflict and deprive them of any currency that would work outside these walls. The concept of 'prison states' needs to be explored.