
The UAE’s secret hacking team of U.S. mercenaries - betolink
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-spying-raven-specialreport-idUKKCN1PO1A6
======
saagarjha
> “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”?

~~~
sremani
for 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.

~~~
conradfr
That's not spying, that's terrorism.

Now maybe you want to make the case that there is good and bad terrorism?

~~~
ryanlol
Terrorism is a rather specific activity and this is not it.

~~~
bawana
Terrorism is an interaction whose purpose is collateral damage. An interaction
whose participants aim to damage those who are not involved.

------
sgpl
Reading 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.”_

~~~
awakeasleep
You'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.

~~~
FakeComments
I find it baffling you can’t imagine a human engaging in tribalism, a behavior
which predates civilization and permeates nearly every facet of human life.

That’s clearly what it is: Stroud views US citizens as “her tribe”, so people
attacking them offends her, while outsiders fighting outsiders doesn’t matter.

Further, this also answers the “moral compass” question: they have a strong
moral compass, it’s simply aligned to tribal protection, rather than some kind
of “universal” ideal, which is precisely what you’d expect from people who
volunteered as soldiers in tribal warfare.

~~~
awakeasleep
You seem to be mistaking an answer to "what" as an answer to "why/how"

~~~
dnbgfher
The answer to "what" is implied above. Evolution.

~~~
ivanhoe
or a military selection of psychos... because ability to limit or completely
switch off the empathy is one of the characteristics of psychopathic criminals

------
mtw
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. 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

~~~
cronix
That'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/wikil...](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)

Vault-7 NSA's "Marble Framework":
[https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/page_14588467.html](https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/page_14588467.html)

~~~
wp381640
> 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

------
HashThis
If 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.

------
headsoup
All 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.

------
hamiltont
Potentially 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...

------
resters
So 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.

------
uneasy-sausage
I'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.

------
roel_v
I 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?

------
mirimir
It'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.

------
creaghpatr
> “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?

~~~
awakeasleep
To paraphrase Zuckerberg,

>A moral obligation without a corresponding legal obligation is a Business
Opportunity

~~~
pretendscholar
Very Ferengi

------
markdown
US citizens and companies don't just provide tech support like this to the
worlds despots, they also provide propaganda expertise. Look into
Qorvis/MSLGroup.

------
yesenadam
So 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
The 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-
fr...](https://www.history.com/news/6-legendary-mercenary-armies-from-
history))

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.

------
mzs
the other story about this, more of the how

[https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-spying-karma-
exclusive...](https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-spying-karma-
exclusive/exclusive-uae-used-cyber-super-weapon-to-spy-on-iphones-of-foes-
idUKKCN1PO19S)

~~~
ycombinatoracct
Karma might be related to this:
[https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2016/03/21/attack-o...](https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2016/03/21/attack-
of-week-apple-imessage/)

------
the_other_guy
kinda 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
It'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.

