Two networks that originated from China operated dozens of fraudulent accounts, pages, and groups across Facebook and Instagram to target users in India, Tibet, Taiwan, Japan, and the Uyghur community. Lastly, it purged 50 accounts on Facebook and Instagram tied to an India-based threat actor dubbed Patchwork, which took advantage of malicious apps uploaded to the Play Store to harvest data from victims in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Tibet, and China.Īlso disrupted by meta are six adversarial networks from the U.S., Venezuela, Iran, China, Georgia, Burkina Faso, and Togo that engaged in what it called "coordinated inauthentic behavior" on Facebook and other social media platforms like Twitter, Telegram, YouTube, Medium, TikTok, Blogspot, Reddit, and WordPress.Īll these geographically dispersed networks are said to have set up fraudulent news media brands, hacktivist groups, and NGOs to build credibility, with three of them linked to a U.S.-based marketing firm named Predictvia, a political marketing consultancy in Togo known as the Groupe Panafricain pour le Commerce et l'Investissement (GPCI), and Georgia's Strategic Communications Department. The apps, which posed as secure chat or VPN apps, have since been removed.
CYBER ESPIONAGE THREATS FROM ISRAEL ANDROID
The tech giant also expunged about 110 accounts on Facebook and Instagram linked to an APT identified as Bahamut that targeted activists, government employees, and military staff in India and Pakistan with Android malware published in the Google Play Store. One of the groups that came under Meta's radar is a Pakistan-based advanced persistent threat (APT) group that relied on a network of 120 accounts on Facebook and Instagram and rogue apps and websites to infect military personnel in India and among the Pakistan Air Force with GravityRAT under the guise of cloud storage and entertainment apps.
CYBER ESPIONAGE THREATS FROM ISRAEL VERIFICATION
The fake accounts, in addition to using traditional lures like women looking for a romantic connection, masqueraded as recruiters, journalists, or military personnel.Īt least two of the cyber espionage efforts entailed the use of low-sophistication malware with reduced capabilities, likely in an attempt to get past app verification checks established by Apple and Google.
"This investment in social engineering meant that these threat actors did not have to invest as much on the malware side." "Each of these APTs relied heavily on social engineering to trick people into clicking on malicious links, downloading malware or sharing personal information across the internet," Guy Rosen, chief information security officer at Meta, said.
Three different threat actors leveraged hundreds of elaborate fictitious personas on Facebook and Instagram to target individuals located in South Asia as part of disparate attacks.
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