Quote:The chief information officer of a leading virtual private network is among three former US intelligence and military personnel who altogether have been fined more than $1.6 million by the US Department of Justice to resolve hacking-related charges. ExpressVPN CIO Daniel Gericke, as first reported Tuesday by Reuters, is among the three former US intelligence operatives and military members involved in Project Raven who worked as mercenary hackers for the United Arab Emirates, helping it spy on its enemies. ExpressVPN said its trust in Gericke "remains strong."

The three defendants have agreed to cooperate with US authorities and pay the fine in exchange for deferred prosecution, according to a Justice Department release. The three have also forfeited foreign and US security clearances and face future employment restrictions. The agreement comes a day after ExpressVPN announced it had been sold as part of a $936 million deal to former adware distributors Kape Technologies, a company co-founded by an ex-Israeli surveillance agent and a billionaire previously convicted of insider trading.

Quote:According to court documents, the defendants worked as senior managers at a United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.)-based company (U.A.E. CO) that supported and carried out computer network exploitation (CNE) operations (i.e., “hacking”) for the benefit of the U.A.E government between 2016 and 2019. Despite being informed on several occasions that their work for U.A.E. CO, under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), constituted a “defense service” requiring a license from the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), the defendants proceeded to provide such services without a license.

These services included the provision of support, direction and supervision in the creation of sophisticated “zero-click” computer hacking and intelligence gathering systems – i.e., one that could compromise a device without any action by the target. U.A.E. CO employees whose activities were supervised by and known to the defendants thereafter leveraged these zero-click exploits to illegally obtain and use access credentials for online accounts issued by U.S. companies, and to obtain unauthorized access to computers, like mobile phones, around the world, including in the United States.