Israeli intel firms’ shady methods spotlighted in UAE flap
A report last week accusing a private Israeli intelligence firm of impersonating journalists in order to elicit information from opponents of an Emirati royal family shines a spotlight on Israeli cyber intelligence firms that reportedly do business in authoritarian regimes.
Investigation has revealed that the owner of the firm in
question, Bluehawk CI, has a history of prior fraud prosecutions in Israel. The
Defense Ministry chose not to respond to a Times of Israel’s inquiry as to why
it had not regulated the firm’s activities abroad.
According to the April 6 report in The Daily Beast, in early
2020 individuals pretending to be a Fox News researcher and a reporter for
Italy’s La Stampa newspaper approached two individuals who have fallen afoul of
the leadership of Ras Al Khaimah, one of seven emirates that make up the United
Arab Emirates (UAE). According to the Daily Beast, the journalist impersonators
tried to trick the two men into divulging information about their legal disputes
with the emirate.
The report underlines how Israel has in recent years spawned
an industry of seemingly unregulated spy-for-hire firms, with former Israeli
military officers privatizing skills they acquired in secretive intelligence
units and often selling their know-how to sketchy individuals or authoritarian
regimes.
The Daily Beast reportedly established the identity of the
private intelligence firm by contacting Facebook, which revealed that accounts
used by the two supposed journalists were associated with the Israeli firm
Bluehawk CI.
Bluehawk CI did not respond to The Times of Israel’s request
for comment.
A spokesperson for Israel’s Ministry of Defense said that
Bluehawk CI does not appear on its list of approved vendors, but did not answer
a follow-up question as to whether the ministry is supposed to be regulating
the company in the first place.
According to Israel’s Defense Export Control Law, anyone
exporting defense equipment or know-how abroad must register with and receive
permission from Israel’s Defense Export Control Agency.
Bluehawk CI is one of the less well-known Israeli private
intelligence firms. Founded in June 2018, it offers cyber technologies and
intelligence solutions, including “social engineering & PR campaign
management” and “complex intelligence investigations,” according to its
website.
The company was founded and is owned by Guy Klisman, a
former major in the Israel Defense Forces. Klisman is also the academic
director of the Pafos Innovation Institute in Cyprus, a cybersecurity studies
institute founded by Uriel Reichman, a law professor who heads the
Interdisciplinary Institute in Herzliya. Klisman’s company, Bluehawk CI, is a
sponsor of the Hapoel Tel Aviv basketball team.
Court filings show that before founding the company, Klisman
was twice indicted by Israeli prosecutors, once for forgery and separately for
multiple unauthorized charges to an acquaintance’s credit card. He acknowledged
guilt in the forgery case while the second indictment was ultimately withdrawn.
According to The Daily Beast, in February 2020, someone
claiming to be named “Samantha,” a FOX News journalist, contacted a man named
Oussama El Omari by email. El Omari is the former chief executive and director
general of the Ras Al Khaimah Free Trade Zone Authority in the United Arab
Emirates. He was convicted in absentia in the UAE for “embezzlement and abuse of position”
following a succession battle in Ras Al Khaimah. El Omari claims the charges
are politically motivated.
“Samantha” reportedly tried to elicit information about his
legal disputes with Ras Al Khaimah. When contacted by The Daily Beast, Facebook
reportedly told news site that “Smantha’s” account was in fact associated with
Bluehawk CI.
According to the Daily Beast, another Facebook user
pretending to be a reporter for Italy’s La Stampa newspaper contacted Khater
Massaad, another foe of the current Ras Al Khaimah regime. Massaad was the head
of Ras Al Khaimah’s sovereign wealth fund, RAKIA until 2012. He was convicted
by an Emirati court in 2015 of embezzlement from RAKIA, charges Massaad
likewise claims were trumped up and politically motivated.
The fake reporter, whom Facebook tied to Bluehawk CI,
likewise tried to elicit information about his relationship with the rulers of
Ras Al Khaimah, The Daily Beast reported.
The recent normalization of ties between Israel and the
United Arab Emirates has been a boon for Israeli intelligence and cybersecurity
firms, with companies like the iPhone-hacking NSO Group, venture capital firm
Synaptech Capital and Cellebrite all reportedly making lucrative deals in the
desert sheikhdoms.
Cybersecurity is Israel’s leading high-tech sector in terms
of the amount of venture capital it attracts, according to the Israel
Innovation Authority [Hebrew link].
For Bluehawk CI, work in the UAE may have been a source of
desperately needed cash.
In 2015, prior to founding Blackhawk CI, Klisman and his
then-wife declared bankruptcy, according to Israeli court filings. The couple
had hundreds of thousands of shekels in consumer debt, which they attributed to
Israel’s “high cost of living.”
Israel is one of the most expensive countries in the world,
with Tel Aviv recently ranked as the world’s fifth most expensive city.
In 2016, Israeli prosecutors indicted Klisman for
counterfeiting bailiffs’ and court documents in an effort to prevent the IDF
from garnishing his salary to pay off creditors. A judge deemed him guilty of
the crimes but did not officially convict him, sentencing him to 250 hours of
community service. Klisman retired from the Israel Defense Forces at the end of
2017 and founded his company six months later.
In January 2018, Klisman was charged by fraud police with
using the credit card number of a woman he met in a Whatsapp tennis group to
make NIS 1,577 (about $450) in unauthorized purchases. A year later the
government withdrew the indictment.
Klisman did not respond to The Times of Israel’s request for
comment.
While it is unclear who may or may not have hired Bluehawk,
Radha Stirling, CEO of Detained in Dubai, a company that represents clients in
legal disputes with UAE governments, believes the government of Ras Al Khaimah
is responsible.
“This is monstrous,” said Stirling in a press release.
“By contracting the espionage out to a private firm, the
government of Ras Al Khaimah is trying to avoid accountability for spying on
foreign nationals outside their jurisdiction; but this is a major breach and
the UAE and Israel must be called to account,” Stirling said.
Where to draw the ethical red line?
According to a 2019 report by Israel’s cyber directorate, at
the end of 2018, Israel had 421 active cyber companies of which 7 percent, or
about 30, are engaged in “cyber intelligence.”
Elad Ratson, a former Israeli diplomat who is the Founder
and CEO of Vayehee, a company that uses technology to counter fake news,
foreign misinformation and what he describes as “online weapons of mass
obstruction,” told that in his estimate the number of such companies is higher.
“Most Israeli cyber intelligence companies specialize in
OSINT or open-source intelligence,” he said. “This is an area of expertise of
the Israeli intelligence services. There are huge amounts of openly available
data online, and Israel’s intelligence services are reputable for their
effective use of machine learning and artificial intelligence to extract
quality intelligence from the sea of available big-data out there.”
The majority of Israeli cyberintelligence companies focus on
passive OSINT, he said, merely scraping data that is freely available.
Some, however, also engage in what he calls “perception
engineering,” or the manipulation of a target’s point of view through methods
of “online deception.” Such companies, he said, one of the most famous of which
is Black Cube, can often earn a bad reputation as a result of their activities.
Nevertheless, Ratson believes that many Israeli
cyberintelligence companies do have ethical red lines they won’t cross.
“Unlike other government ministries in Israel, the Israeli
Defense Ministry has a strong export regulatory arm. Israeli cyber companies
are cautious about working for the ‘wrong’ type of clients and falling afoul of
the Defense Ministry,” he said.
Nevertheless, “the temptation is high,” Ratson added.
“Sometimes when there are large sums of money on the table, some companies have
attempted to cut ethical corners. That’s when you start to see negative
international press associated with Israeli cyber companies.
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