Three former US intelligence officers have confessed to conducting cyberattacks on the United Arab Emirates, aimed at enemies or rivals of the Gulf country, according to Agence France-Presse, citing the US Department of Justice.
Mark Bayer, 49, Ryan Adams, 34, and Daniel Gerrick, 40, have agreed with the US judiciary to pay fines totaling $ 1.7 million – the amount they earned working for the Emirates. They will pay this amount so that the criminal prosecution against them can be stopped.
The three worked for U.S. military intelligence before taking part in a cyberattack by an UAE-linked UAE company from 2016 to 2019 aimed at various targets, mostly U.S. servers, according to U.S. Department of Justice documents. .
Tens of millions of smartphones were accessed during one such piracy operation.
In addition to financial fines, the perpetrators, who were released from intelligence agencies, were banned from conducting new cyberattacks, according to France Press.