HOW THE UAE IS RECRUITING HACKERS TO CREATE THE PERFECT SURVEILLANCE STATE <https://theintercept.com/2016/10/24/darkmatter-united-arab-emirates-spies-fo...> In July, Simone Margaritelli, an Italian security researcher, boarded a Boeing 777 in Rome headed for Dubai, a city now billing itself as a tech startup hub. He had a big job interview with a new, well-funded cybersecurity company called DarkMatter, whose self-described mission is to “safeguard the most complex organizations,” from government to the private sector, by preventing and fighting malicious cyberattacks and providing secure methods of communication — defensive cybersecurity, rather than offensive, which involves breaking into online systems and devices for espionage or destruction. A friend of a friend had recommended Margaritelli, who was invited to spend five days in the United Arab Emirates at the company’s expense to learn more about the job. When he arrived in Dubai, the City of Gold, he found a full schedule of outings and a deluxe suite at the Jannah Marina Bay Suites hotel. Margaritelli used to be a “blackhat” — a hacker looking to break into electronic systems. Now he works for a mobile security firm called Zimperium, where he still hunts for security flaws but does so to help people fix them. I “break stuff to make the world a safer place,” his website reads. He’s most well known for a portable tool he developed called Bettercap, used to perform a man-in-the-middle attack, where a hacker can eavesdrop or sometimes alter private communications between individuals. When he arrived at the 29th floor of the Marina Plaza for his interview, the company representative described a plan to deploy electronic probes all over major cities in the UAE, which a team of hackers would then break into, guaranteeing access for DarkMatter and its customer — the Emirati government. The mission would be for the “exclusive” benefit of national security, Margaritelli was told. “Imagine that there’s a person of interest at the Dubai Mall, we’ve already set up all our probes all over the city, we press a button and BOOM! All the devices in the mall are infected and traceable,” Margaritelli wrote in a blog post recounting his experience. Margaritelli declined to pursue the job offer. After his post, titled “How the United Arab Emirates Intelligence Tried to Hire Me to Spy on Its People,” began circulating, DarkMatter issued a single terse Twitter reply. The company said it preferred “talking reality & not fantasy.” [...]