{"id":42849,"date":"2021-09-15T06:45:12","date_gmt":"2021-09-15T06:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/ex-us-intel-military-trio-were-cyber-mercenaries-for-uae-say-prosecutors\/"},"modified":"2021-09-15T06:45:12","modified_gmt":"2021-09-15T06:45:12","slug":"ex-us-intel-military-trio-were-cyber-mercenaries-for-uae-say-prosecutors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/ex-us-intel-military-trio-were-cyber-mercenaries-for-uae-say-prosecutors\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-US intel, military trio were cyber-mercenaries for UAE, say prosecutors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three former US intelligence and military operatives broke America’s weapons export and computer security laws by, among other things, helping the United Arab Emirates hijack and siphon data from people’s iPhones, it emerged on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

US citizens Marc Baier, 49, and Ryan Adams, 34, and ex-citizen Daniel Gericke, 40, were charged [PDF<\/a>] with using “illicit, fraudulent, and criminal means, including the use of advanced covert hacking systems that utilized computer exploits obtained from the United States and elsewhere, to gain unauthorized access to protected computers in the United States and elsewhere and to illicitly obtain information … from victims from around the world.”<\/p>\n

They also, according to the rap sheet, obtained and used people’s passwords and authentication tokens to break into accounts and systems in the US and beyond. And they did all that “while evading the export control supervision of the United States government.”<\/p>\n