This is the story about an ex-NSA agent who went to work for a secret hacking group in the UAE.
Sponsors
This episode was sponsored by Thinkst Canary. Their canaries attract malicious actors in your network and then send you an alert if someone tries to access them. Great early warning system for knowing when someone is snooping around where they shouldn’t be. Check them out at https://canary.tools.
Support for this episode comes from Blinkist. They offer thousands of condensed non-fiction books, so you can get through books in about 15 minutes. Check out Blinkist.com/DARKNET to start your 7 day free trial and get 25% off when you sign up.
Sources
- Reuters: Project Raven
- Reuters: The Karma Hack
- Reuters: America’s Foreign Hackers
- Reuters: Google blocks websites certified by DarkMatter, after Reuters reports
- Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
- Citizen Lab report: Stealth Falcon
- Video: Rori Donaghy
- Video: Ahmed Mansoor
- Project Zero: Bugs in iPhone reported
- Project Zero: Details of iPhone bugs
- Project Zero: Additional details of iPhone bugs
- Dark Matter’s website
- Cyberpoint’s website
Attribution
Darknet Diaries is created by Jack Rhysider.
Artwork this episode by Yakoross.
Theme music created by Breakmaster Cylinder. Theme song available for listen and download at bandcamp. Or listen to it on Spotify.
Additional music by Epidemic Sound.
Equipment
Recording equipment used this episode was the Shure SM7B, a cloudlifter, Audient ID4, Sony MDR7506 headphones, and Hindenburg audio editor.
Transcript
[FULL TRANSCRIPT]
JACK: What’s a mercenary? Let me look this up; okay, there are two main definitions. One is a soldier hired to do work for another army and the second is a person who works purely because of monetary gains. I’m gonna guess that they don’t have allegiance other than whoever is paying them. They’re hirelings; they get paid to do a job and to get it done and they’re not supposed to ask why. But mercenaries are people and people are complex. They’re filled with emotions and they actually do have allegiance even if they’re paid to forget about that. If you pay a mercenary to do something that goes over their moral line they’ve got internally, conflict happens and everything falls apart.