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Using a career in U.S. government intelligence to provide unlicensed hacking services to a foreign government is a categorical no-no, the Justice Department said this week.
The services provided by three U.S. citizens working as senior executives at a United Arab Emirates-based company violated U.S. export control laws and computer fraud and abuse, the DOJ said.
The three defendants, Marc Baier, 49, and Ryan Adams, 34, and former US citizen Daniel Gericke, 40 – all former employees of the US Intelligence Community or the US military – agreed to pay. $ 1,685,000 in penalties in connection with a deferred lawsuit agreement.
Three former intelligence workers have agreed with the US Department of Justice to pay $ 1.68 million to provide hacking services to a company in the United Arab Emirates. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images / Getty Images)
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The agreement also restricts their future activities and employment.
The defendants were part of an “underground unit called Project Raven which helped the United Arab Emirates spy on their enemies,” according to Reuters.
The defendants “supported and carried out computer network operations” – otherwise known as hacking – “for the benefit of the government of the United Arab Emirates between 2016 and 2019”, according to court documents.
The defendants have been warned that their work for the UAE company constitutes a defense service, which requires a license from the Department of State’s Defense Trade Controls Directorate (DDTC). Despite the warning, the defendants continued to provide unlicensed services.
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Worse yet, one of the services provided is considered a particularly malicious type of hack known as ‘zero click’, where malware can be downloaded without any user interaction. Typically, a user clicks on a malicious link, for example, to run the malware.
The UAE-based company employees then “exploited these clickless exploits to illegally obtain and use credentials to access online accounts issued by US companies, and to gain unauthorized access to computers, such as mobile phones, worldwide, including the United States ”. said the DOJ.
Providing so called mercenary hacking services is no small problem. There was a serious iPhone hack last week linked to a company providing mercenary hacking services.
“Hackers and those who otherwise support such activities in violation of US law should expect to be prosecuted for their criminal conduct,” said Acting Deputy Attorney General Mark J. Lesko for the Security Division National Ministry of Justice in a press release.
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Jake Williams, co-founder and CTO of BreachQuest, an Augusta, Ga.-Based company that provides incident response, said those involved should have been aware of the consequences of their work.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Project Raven crossed a legal border. What is less clear is whether the American people involved knew the Project would be used to target other American people and organizations,” Williams told FOX Business.
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“Given that the initial mission was planned as a counterterrorism mission, a mission which is very loosely defined by its nature, it was foreseeable that this could be the end result,” said Williams.
“[When] Both US companies and US nationals have been targeted as part of the program, each US person involved probably knew it was only a matter of time before legal action was taken, ”Williams added.
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