Hackers from Pakistan used Facebook to target people in Afghanistan with connections to the previous government during the Taliban takeover of the country, the company’s threat investigators said in a statement. interview with Reuters.
Facebook said the group, known in the security industry as SideCopy, shared links to websites hosting malware that could survey people’s devices. The targets included people with ties to the government, military and law enforcement in Kabul, it said. Facebook said it removed SideCopy from its platform in August.
The social media company, which recently changed its name to Meta, says the group created fictional characters of young women as “romantic lures” to build trust and trick targets into clicking phishing links or download malicious chat apps. It also infiltrates legitimate websites to manipulate people into giving up their Facebook credentials.
Mike Dvilyanski, Facebook’s head of cyber espionage, said: “It’s always been difficult for us to speculate on the ultimate goal of a threat actor. “We don’t know exactly who was compromised or what the end result of that was.”
Major online platforms and email providers including Facebook, Twitter Inc, Alphabet Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Microsoft Corp’s LinkedIn said they had taken steps to lock down Afghan users’ accounts during the takeover rapidly by the Taliban this past summer.
Facebook said earlier that it had not disclosed the hacking campaign, which it said increased between April and August due to safety concerns for its employees in the country and the need for more work to regulate it. network check. It said it shared the information with the US State Department at the time it became operational.
Investigators also said last month Facebook disabled the accounts of two hacking groups linked to Syrian Air Force Intelligence.
Facebook said one group, known as the Syrian Electronic Army, targeted human rights activists, journalists and others opposed to the ruling regime, while the other targeted those people with ties to the Free Syrian Army and former soldiers who joined the opposition.
David Agranovich, Facebook’s head of global threat disruption, said the incidents in Syria and Afghanistan showed that cyber espionage groups capitalize on volatile times in conflicts when people can be vulnerable. more manipulative.
The company said a third attack network in Syria, linked to the Syrian government and removed in October, targeted minorities, activists and members of the Human Protection Units. Civil Defense (YPG) and the Syrian Civil Defense, or the White Helmets.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
