Project DREAD: White House veterans helped Gulf monarchy build secret surveillance unit

In the years after 9/11, former U.S. counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke warned Congress that the country needed more expansive spying powers to prevent another catastrophe. Five years after leaving government, he shopped the same idea to an enthusiastic partner: an Arab monarchy with deep pockets.

In 2008, Clarke went to work as a consultant guiding the United Arab Emirates as it created a cyber surveillance capability that would utilize top American intelligence contractors to help monitor threats against the tiny nation.

The secret unit Clarke helped create had an ominous acronym: #DREAD, short for #Development #Research #Exploitation and #Analysis #Department. In the years that followed, the #UAE unit expanded its hunt far beyond suspected extremists to include a #Saudi women’s rights activist, diplomats at the United Nations and personnel at #FIFA, the world soccer body. By 2012, the program would be known among its #American operatives by a codename: #Project #Raven.

Reuters reports this year revealed how a group of former National Security Agency operatives and other elite American intelligence veterans helped the UAE spy on a wide range of targets through the previously undisclosed program — from terrorists to human rights activists, journalists and dissidents.

Now, an examination of the origins of DREAD, reported here for the first time, shows how a pair of former senior White House leaders, working with ex-#NSA #spies and #Beltway contractors, played pivotal roles in building a program whose actions are now under scrutiny by federal authorities.

To chart the UAE spying mission’s evolution, #Reuters examined more than 10,000 DREAD program documents and interviewed more than a dozen contractors, intelligence operatives and former government insiders with direct knowledge of the program. The documents Reuters reviewed span nearly a decade of the DREAD program, starting in 2008, and include internal memos describing the project’s logistics, operational plans and targets.

Clarke was the first in a string of former White House and U.S. defense executives who arrived in the UAE after 9/11 to build the spying unit. Utilizing his close relationship to the country’s rulers, forged through decades of experience as a senior U.S. decision-maker, Clarke won numerous security consulting contracts in the UAE. One of them was to help build the secret spying unit in an unused airport facility in Abu Dhabi.

👉🏼 Read more:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-raven-whitehouse/

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Stealing Data With CSS: Attack and Defense

Summary: A method is detailed - dubbed CSS Exfil - which can be used to steal targeted data using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as an attack vector. Due to the modern web's heavy reliance on CSS, a wide variety of data is potentially at risk, including: usernames, passwords, and sensitive data such as date of birth, social security numbers, and credit card numbers. The technique can also be used to de-anonymize users on dark nets like Tor. Defense methods are discussed for both website operators as well as web users, and a pair of browser extensions are offered which guard against this class of attack.

👀 👉🏼 Want to check if you are vulnerable?
https://www.mike-gualtieri.com/css-exfil-vulnerability-tester

💡 👉🏼 Want to protect yourself?

👉🏼 Install the Chrome plugin:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/css-exfil-protection/ibeemfhcbbikonfajhamlkdgedmekifo

👉🏼 Install the Firefox plugin:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/css-exfil-protection

👀 👉🏼 Methods of Exploitation and Proof of Concept
https://www.mike-gualtieri.com/posts/stealing-data-with-css-attack-and-defense

#css #attack #defense #exploitation #vulnerability
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