VPN companies relationship mesh

[Staff 9189]

Hello!

Very interesting analytical and investigative work by Windscribe disclosing ties (even hidden ones) between VPN companies, publishers, review web sites. Click on node icons to read more details. Very sinister situation at a glance. Note for example how Crossrider (now Kape), well known malware company co-founded by a member of israeli Defense Forces Unit 8200, nowadays controls major VPNs and review web sites:
https://embed.kumu.io/9ced55e897e74fd807be51990b26b415#vpn-company-relationships/control-d

Kind regards
 

[OpenSourcerer 1215]

Oh, I've seen this in a Reddit post a few months ago. As there are more icons and lines now, it seems like they are updating the view still, so this is ongoing work! Nice.
 

9 hours ago, Staff said:

well known malware company co-founded by a member of israeli Defense Forces Unit 8200, nowadays controls major VPNs and review web sites:

This sentence is a tiny bit suggestive the way it's formulated here. It's mentioned because Unit 8200 is regarded as "the foremost technical intelligence agency in the world [standing] on a par with the NSA in everything except scale". Also keep in mind that, due to the fact it's not an agency like the NSA but part of the military, its goals are not widespread surveillance but rather keeping watch on the neighbours due to Israel being located in a "bad neighbourhood in the Middle East".
Source

[Staff 9189]

16 hours ago, OpenSourcerer said:

Oh, I've seen this in a Reddit post a few months ago. As there are more icons and lines now, it seems like they are updating the view still, so this is ongoing work! Nice.

Yes, a very nice one.
 

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This sentence is a tiny bit suggestive the way it's formulated here.

Apparently it is perfectly formulated, because it's 100% true and accurate, and it's not formulated here, but there.
 

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It's mentioned because Unit 8200 is regarded as "the foremost technical intelligence agency in the world [standing] on a par with the NSA in everything except scale".

It's mentioned because Crossrider/Kape was founded by a member of Unit 8200, a cyber spy agency, and its (Crossrider's) primary business was facilitating malware and computer infections. Recently it acquired major VPNs (such as Private Internet Access, Express VPN and CyberGhost) as well as review web sites.
 

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its goals are not widespread surveillance but rather keeping watch on the neighbours due to Israel being located in a "bad neighbourhood in the Middle East".

In reality in the FT article you mention you can read the interview to Lempert (chairman of the Unit 8200 alumni association and CEO of MER mobile comms group) who claims that 8200 is focusing (the article is 7 years old) on huge data mining, which is exactly extensive surveillance of the Internet, and we could also mention the documents leaked by Snowden, which revealed how Unit 8200, referred to as ISNU, receives raw, unfiltered data of U.S. citizens, as part of a secret agreement with the NSA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Israel_Memorandum_of_Understanding_SIGINT.pdf

Are US citizens "bad neighbors" too?

Anyway. It's irrelevant whether the purposes of Kape match those of Unit 8200. Kape could be or not a puppet of 8200, you don't know and we don't know, and perhaps it's not,  and still that's not the point. The relevance of a member of 8200 founding a company spreading malware and now controlling VPN is the relationships and competence acquired by that member during his/her previous job, used against citizens unconditionally, since Kape operated essentially in browser hijacking, ad injectors and other remunerative computer infections worldwide.

Remember for example Gericke ("strangely", he is also ExpressVPN CIO), Adams and Baier: they used their great competence acquired while they worked for US intelligence agencies to assist UAE regime to crack journalists, activists, monarchy political opponents phones and computers, to help UAE suppress or control any possible dissident or uncomfortable journalist. Officially it was not CIA or USIC interest to do that (and actually all three of them have been charged by DoJ for that "job") but anyway they greatly succeeded in their UAE job because they were trained by and had the knowledge of and access to certain technology from their former employers.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/three-former-us-intelligence-community-and-military-personnel-agree-pay-more-168-million

Kind regards