Meta identifies hacking campaign targeting Ukraine

On Monday, Meta Platforms Inc. uncovered a hacking campaign that has used Facebook to target prominent public figures in Ukraine.

The technology company attributes the hacking efforts to a group known as Ghostwriter.

They successfully gained access to the social media accounts of high-profile military officials, politicians, and journalists.

Accordingly, the hackers attempted to post YouTube videos portraying weakened Ukrainian troops.

They included one video that shows soldiers coming out of a forest and raising a white flag of surrender.

Additionally, Ukrainian cybersecurity officials mentioned that hackers from Belarus targeted the private email addresses of their military personnel.

Meta’s security team reported that it had taken steps to secure targeted accounts and had blocked the phishing domains.

It noted that in the past 24-hours, it had removed a network of 40 fake accounts, groups, and pages across Facebook and Instagram.

The firm cited that the said accounts violated its rules against coordinated inauthentic behavior.

Will Meta reveal names

However, Meta declined to release the names of the targets but said it had alerted users where possible.

The social media company also discovered a separate influence campaign based on Kyiv, which used several fictitious personas.

The group ran a small number of websites impersonating independent news outlets. These sites posted claims about the West betraying Ukraine and tagged the country as a failed state.

Meta said it had found links between this influence network and an operation it removed last April 2020.

The network-connected individuals in Russia, the Donbas region in Ukraine, and two media outlets based in Crimea.

Consequently, Meta said that the two separate campaigns were both small in scale and caught in the early stages.

The hacking effort had less than 4,000 Facebook accounts followers on one of its pages. However, the tech giant did not say how long the campaigns were active on its platforms.

Meta Says Hacking Network Affects Twitter, Youtube

Moreover, Meta said that the focus of the hacking network is to drive traffic on social media platforms.

The effort already affected Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, and Russian social networks VK and Odnoklassniki.

Meanwhile, on Friday, Russia announced a partially restricted access to Facebook.

The move came after Meta refused Moscow’s request to stop the independent fact-checking of several Russian state media outlets.

Eventually, Twitter also said on Saturday that its service faces restrictions for some Russian users.

Furthermore, Meta recently made changes in its platform amid the escalating aggression of Russia to Ukraine.

It removed the ability to view and search the friends’ lists of Facebook accounts in Ukraine.

The firm also announced that it would apply this change in Russia to protect civil society and protesters.