Facebook takes down accounts linked to spy firms snooping on journalists, politicians: Report

Representative image

A vast network of activity from surveillance-for-hire firms from India to Israel, which used hacking tools and of fake personas to monitor dissidents, journalists and politicians from across the globe, has been exposed by cybersecurity researchers from Facebook, according to a CNN report.

Reportedly, parent company Meta took down hundreds of Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to seven different spy organisations including Black Cube – which was used by now exposed media mogul Harvey Weinstein to track actresses and journalists.

The spy companies identified are Black Cube, Bluehawk, Cytrox, Cobwebs Technology, Cognyte, Indian firm BellTroX and an unnamed Chinese entity, CNN said.

Meta has also notified around 50,000 people who were targeted by these spy companies, the company said in its blog post.

The investigations were jointly conducted by Meta and the University of Toronto’s digital rights research centre Citizen Lab.

The teams discovered invasive spyware allegedly built by Cytrox, on the phone of Ayman Nour, a former Egyptian presidential candidate and critic of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

In a report published on December 16, Meta researchers said the cyber companies claimed they only target criminals and terrorist, but “months-long investigation” found that the targeting is “indiscriminate” and offer clients a range of services, such as hacking tools for infiltrating mobile phones, to access to social media accounts to monitor targets.

The report said Meta had removed about 400 Facebook accounts, the vast majority of which were inactive for years, linked to BellTroX and used for reconnaissance, social engineering and to send malicious links, PTI reported.

BellTroX sells what's known as "hacking for hire" services, which were reported previously as well. Its activity on Meta's platform was limited and sporadic between 2013 to 2019, after which it paused.

"BellTroX operated fake accounts to impersonate a politician and pose as journalists and environmental activists in an attempt to social-engineer its targets to solicit information including their email addresses, likely for phishing attacks at a later stage," the report said.

A Cobwebs spokesperson told CNN they are unaware of any claims made by Facebook about their services, and that they “operate only according to the law and adhere to strict standards in respect of privacy protection."

BellTroX could not be reached and the other four did not respond to queries, CNN added.