dChan
Anonymous ID: 6a02e7 Feb. 5, 2019, 2:27 p.m. No.5041160   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>1219 >>1293 >>1327 >>1686 >>1764

PROJECT RAVEN (1 of 3)

 

Inside the UAE’s secret hacking team of American mercenaries

 

Ex-NSA operatives reveal how they helped spy on targets for the Arab monarchy — dissidents, rival leaders and journalists.

 

Two weeks after leaving her position as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. National Security Agency in 2014, Lori Stroud was in the Middle East working as a hacker for an Arab monarchy. She had joined Project Raven, a clandestine team that included more than a dozen former U.S. intelligence operatives recruited to help the United Arab Emirates engage in surveillance of other governments, militants and human rights activists critical of the monarchy. Stroud and her team, working from a converted mansion in Abu Dhabi known internally as “the Villa,” would use methods learned from a decade in the U.S intelligence community to help the UAE hack into the phones and computers of its enemies. Stroud had been recruited by a Maryland cybersecurity contractor to help the Emiratis launch hacking operations, and for three years, she thrived in the job. But in 2016, the Emiratis moved Project Raven to a UAE cybersecurity firm named DarkMatter. Before long, Stroud and other Americans involved in the effort say they saw the mission cross a red line: targeting fellow Americans for surveillance. “I am working for a foreign intelligence agency who is targeting U.S. persons,” she told Reuters. “I am officially the bad kind of spy.”

 

The story of Project Raven reveals how former U.S. government hackers have employed state-of-the-art cyber-espionage tools on behalf of a foreign intelligence service that spies on human rights activists, journalists and political rivals. Interviews with nine former Raven operatives, along with a review of thousands of pages of project documents and emails, show that surveillance techniques taught by the NSA were central to the UAE’s efforts to monitor opponents. The sources interviewed by Reuters were not Emirati citizens. The operatives utilized an arsenal of cyber tools, including a cutting-edge espionage platform known as Karma, in which Raven operatives say they hacked into the iPhones of hundreds of activists, political leaders and suspected terrorists. Details of the Karma hack were described in a separate Reuters article today. An NSA spokesman declined to comment on Raven. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment. A spokeswoman for UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment. The UAE’s Embassy in Washington and a spokesman for its National Media Council did not respond to requests for comment.

 

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spying-raven/index.html

Anonymous ID: 6a02e7 Feb. 5, 2019, 2:36 p.m. No.5041293   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>1327 >>1686 >>1764

>>5041160

PROJECT RAVEN

Inside the UAE’s secret hacking team of American mercenaries

 

Ex-NSA operatives reveal how they helped spy on targets for the Arab monarchy — dissidents, rival leaders and journalists.

 

STEP 1 NESA agents called on Raven management to gather information on the targets.

 

STEP 2 Using fake identities and Bitcoin, the Infrastructure department anonymously rented servers around the world. Those remote servers allowed Raven to launch attacks from a network of machines that cannot be traced back to the project.

 

STEP 3 Raven management assigned members of its Targeting division — mostly American former intelligence operatives — to figure out ways to spy on the targets.

 

STEP 4 Targeting division worked together with a team of software developers to identify and build appropriate computer attacks for those specific devices or accounts used by the targets.

 

STEP 5 The Initial Access Development group then provided the operational team with hacking tools designed to breach each specific target. The Operations team launched hacking missions against the people or organizations requested by NESA. They stole data and installed malicious software on the targets’ systems to maintain access.

 

STEP 6 Data retrieved from the hacking operations was dumped into a memory repository where it could be decrypted, organized and analyzed. Management collected useful information and turned it over to NESA.

 

After Raven achieved initial access into its target’s accounts, it maintained surveillance and continued to vacuum up emails, photos and the person’s location for as long as possible.

 

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spying-raven/index.html

Anonymous ID: 6a02e7 Feb. 5, 2019, 2:40 p.m. No.5041327   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>1528 >>1686 >>1764

>>5041160 >>5041293 (3 of 3)

 

PROJECT RAVEN

 

Inside the UAE’s secret hacking team of American mercenaries

 

Ex-NSA operatives reveal how they helped spy on targets for the Arab monarchy — dissidents, rival leaders and journalists.

 

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spying-raven/index.html

Anonymous ID: 6a02e7 Feb. 5, 2019, 2:50 p.m. No.5041438   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>1686 >>1764

The Karma Hack

 

Ateam of former U.S. government intelligence operatives working for the United Arab Emirates hacked into the iPhones of activists, diplomats and rival foreign leaders with the help of a sophisticated spying tool called Karma, in a campaign that shows how potent cyber-weapons are proliferating beyond the world’s superpowers and into the hands of smaller nations. The cyber tool allowed the small Gulf country to monitor hundreds of targets beginning in 2016, from the Emir of Qatar and a senior Turkish official to a Nobel Peace laureate human-rights activist in Yemen, according to five former operatives and program documents reviewed by Reuters. The sources interviewed by Reuters were not Emirati citizens.

 

Karma was used by an offensive cyber operations unit in Abu Dhabi comprised of Emirati security officials and former American intelligence operatives working as contractors for the UAE’s intelligence services. The existence of Karma and of the hacking unit, code named Project Raven, haven’t been previously reported. Raven’s activities are detailed in a separate story published by Reuters today. The ex-Raven operatives described Karma as a tool that could remotely grant access to iPhones simply by uploading phone numbers or email accounts into an automated targeting system. The tool has limits — it doesn’t work on Android devices and doesn’t intercept phone calls. But it was unusually potent because, unlike many exploits, Karma did not require a target to click on a link sent to an iPhone, they said.

 

In 2016 and 2017, Karma was used to obtain photos, emails, text messages and location information from targets’ iPhones. The technique also helped the hackers harvest saved passwords, which could be used for other intrusions. It isn’t clear whether the Karma hack remains in use. The former operatives said that by the end of 2017, security updates to Apple Inc’s iPhone software had made Karma far less effective. Lori Stroud, a former Raven operative who also previously worked at the U.S. National Security Agency, told Reuters of the excitement when Karma was introduced in 2016. “It was like, ‘We have this great new exploit that we just bought. Get us a huge list of targets that have iPhones now,’” she said. “It was like Christmas.”

 

The disclosure of Karma and the Raven unit comes amid an escalating cyber arms race, with rivals such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE competing for the most sophisticated hacking tools and personnel. Tools like Karma, which can exploit hundreds of iPhones simultaneously, capturing their location data, photos and messages, are particularly sought-after, veterans of cyberwarfare say. Only about 10 nations, such as Russia, China and the United States and its closest allies, are thought to be capable of developing such weapons, said Michael Daniel, a former White House cybersecurity czar under President Obama. Karma and similar tools make personal devices like iPhones the “juiciest of targets,” said Patrick Wardle, a former National Security Agency researcher and Apple security expert. A spokeswoman for UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment. Apple Inc declined to comment.

 

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spying-karma/

Anonymous ID: 6a02e7 Feb. 5, 2019, 3:04 p.m. No.5041585   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>1607 >>1686 >>1764

>>5041525

UAE- US Relations

 

Testimonial

 

“The United States and the UAE enjoy a vibrant and expanding bilateral relationship, including strong defense cooperation and economic ties, and a shared commitment to advancing peace, economic opportunity, and stability throughout the world.”

 

https://www.uae-embassy.org/uae-us-relations/key-areas-bilateral-cooperation