Sat 18 December 2021:
On Thursday, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, banned a number of “cyber mercenary” groups, alerting 50,000 users who may have been targeted by companies that spy on activists, dissidents, and journalists.
Meta took down 1,500 Facebook and Instagram pages linked to groups that offered services ranging from online snooping to building trust with targets using fake personas to digital snooping via hacking attacks.
Furthermore, Facebook has issued an alert to 50,000 users in over 100 countries who may have been targeted by companies, including several from Israel, a major player in the cyber-surveillance industry.
“The surveillance-for-hire industry… looks like indiscriminate targeting on behalf of the highest bidder,” Nathaniel Gleicher, head of security policy at Meta, told a press briefing.
Facebook has deactivated the accounts of Cobwebs Technologies, Cognyte, Black Cube, and Bluehawk CI, all of which are based in Israel or were founded there.
BellTroX, an Indian company, Cytrox, a Macedonian company, and another entity with an unidentified location in China all had their Meta accounts removed.
Cytrox was also accused by Citizen Lab, a Canadian cybersecurity organization, of developing and selling spyware that was used to hack Egyptian opposition figure Ayman Nour’s phone.
“These cyber mercenaries often claim that their services only target criminals and terrorists,” said a Meta statement.
“Targeting is in fact indiscriminate and includes journalists, dissidents, critics of authoritarian regimes, families of opposition members and human rights activists,” it added. “We have banned them from our services.”
Before beginning the surveillance process, most companies selling “web intelligence services” gather information from publicly available online sources such as news reports and Wikipedia.
According to Meta investigators, cyber mercenaries then created fake accounts on social media sites to gather information about users, joining groups and conversations to learn more.
A third strategy is to gain a target’s trust on social media and then trick them into clicking a booby-trapped link or file that installs software that can steal data from their devices.
Mercenaries with this level of access can steal data from a target’s phone or computer. They can also activate microphones, cameras, and tracking systems invisibly.
While Meta was unable to determine who was behind the Chinese operation, it was able to trace “command and control” of the surveillance tool to servers that appeared to be used by Chinese law enforcement.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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