All these days, we have seen US Intelligence breaking into the networks of foreign nations to conduct espionage or to gather intelligence. But now, here’s a news story where US employees were found hacking for foreign government.
The highlight in this news is that all those who were serving foreign governments were caught guilty and were penalized by the United States Intelligence Community last week.
Going deep into the story, three Americans named March Baier(49), Ryan Adams(34), and Daniel Gericke(40) were prosecuted by the Department of Justice for taking salary from the federal government and working for UAE nation regarding illegal information gathering between 2016 and 2019- that clearly violates US Export Control, Computer Fraud and access device fraud laws.
So, all the 3 were asked to sign a definitive prosecution agreement that legally asks them to pay $1,680,000 as a penalty.
Highly placed sources reporting to Cybersecurity Insiders say that the three persons who held a managerial position in a federal organization of UAE used a software that was unlawfully sourced from US intelligence to spy on mobile phones and computers operating in US and across the world.
The unlicensed software tools and credentials were then passed on to the company’s UAE branch from where some employees were assigned the task of spying and gathering intelligence on companies operating in United Arab Emirates.
As the whole process was contraband and had the potential to put a dent on the National Integrity of America, Mark J Lesko, the acting assistant Attorney General working for the Justice Department’s National Security Division penalized the three Americans for their deeds such as exporting unlicensed software, failing to adhere to the stipulations related to defense services leading to computer network exploitation, and infiltration of operating systems on foreign soil with no legal authority from the acting state.
More details are awaited and will be updated shortly when available!
