Hi, I'm Ran Levy. Welcome back to Malicious Life in collaboration with Cyber Resort. Two episodes ago, Patrick Wardle of Jemph described Tootoc, one of the most clever hacks ever designed.

Last episode, Bill Marzak from Citizen Lab identified some of the powerful people behind that app.

The fact that Totoc came out of the United Arab Emirates is no surprise.

In recent years, the UAE has deployed some of the most sophisticated mobile device exploits ever seen.

They've emerged as one of the world's leading superpowers in mobile hacking and not by

accident.

They got a lot of help from one country in particular.

Today's episode, the third and final iteration of this mini series we're doing is about the UAE but it's really

about the Americans. My name is Chris B. I'm a summer security reporter with Reuters in Washington, D.C.

and I cover Nation State Hacking.

Last year, Chris Bing, in collaboration with his investigative partner, Joel Sheckman,

published a story that rewrote the narrative on international government surveillance.

They interviewed more than a dozen former U.S. intelligence operatives who all shared one dirty

secret.

Only one of those former operatives agreed to be identified for the story.

Her name is Lori Stroud and she is one of the most interesting characters you'll ever find in cyber security.

She is middle-aged with blonde hair and very dark brown eyes.

Lori worked at the NSA. She originally joined the military out of college and after a number of years at NSA Hawaii became a Boo Booth Allen contractor.

Bo's Allen Hamilton is a consulting firm, whatever that means, whose business is nearly 100% comprised

of government intelligence contracts.

If you know about the military industrial complex, you can think of Bose Allen as being

part of the kind of military intelligence complex.

...