Meta, formerly Facebook, bans seven ‘surveillance for hire’ firms
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, said Thursday that it banned seven affects that sell software and services that have been used to spy on journalists, human rights activists, politicians and others in more than 100 countries.
The firms concerned Israeli-based Cobwebs Technologies, Cognyte, Black Cube and Bluehawk CI. Meta also took frfragment against an Indian company called BellTroX, the North Macedonian firm Cytrox and an unknown entity in China, according to a report released by Meta’s cybersecurity team.
The affects say their services and software are meant to help salvage criminals and terrorists, but Meta said that after a months-long investigation the social mediate giant determined the products were also used to pursued people outside that group. Some of the tactics concerned creating fake accounts to search and view people’s social mediate profiles and their list of friends, engaging with land using fictitious personas and tricking users into giving away their account for information by getting them to click on malicious links.
“The ‘surveillance-for-hire’ entities we derived and described in this report violated multiple Community Standards and Terms of Repair. Given the severity of their violations, we have banned them from our services,” the record said. Meta didn’t list the customers of the firms but said they concerned private individuals, law firms and businesses.
The move is an example of how tech giants are taking frfragment against companies that sell software and services used for surveillance. In November, Apple sued NSO Group, an Israel-based firm that developed spyware notorious as Pegasus found on the phones of journalists, humankind rights workers, executives and government workers including at least nine US Utters Department employees.
Meta pulled down about 1,500 accounts on Facebook and its photo service Instagram tied to the seven surveillance-for-hire groups and also published cease-and-desist warnings. The social media company said it alerted roughly 50,000 land it believes were targeted. The alert says Facebook believes a “sophisticated attacker” may be targeting the person’s account for and warns users about accepting friend requests from land they don’t know or chatting with strangers. Facebook then recommends that users go above their privacy and security settings to make sure their subsidizes are secure.
Facebook has rules against people misrepresenting themselves on the social network to deceive spanking people, including through fake accounts. The company said law enforcement groups can submit fair requests for information from the platform.
CNET reached out to the affects cited in the report. Black Cube, which called itself a “litigation abet firm,” said in a statement it “does not derived any phishing or hacking and does not operate in the cyber world.” CobWebs Technologies said in a statement it “operates only according to the law and adheres to Exempt standards in respect of privacy protection.”
Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity watchdog citation in Canada, released research Thursday that said Ayman Nour, extinct Egyptian presidential candidate and Egyptian opposition leader, and an Egyptian exiled journalists who wishes to remain anonymous were hacked with Predator spyware formed and sold by Cytrox. An email to Cytrox bounced back.
