Meta has disrupted the operations of seven different spyware-making companies, blocking their Internet infrastructure, sending cease letters, and banning them from its platform.
Director of Threat Disruption David Agranovich and Head of Cyber Espionage Investigations Mike Dvilyanski stated that they have taken actions against seven different surveillance-for-hire entities to disrupt their ability to use their digital infrastructure to abuse social media platforms and enable surveillance of people across the internet.
These surveillance providers are based in China, Israel, India, and North Macedonia. They targeted people in over 100 countries around the world on behalf of their clients.
Following this months-long investigation, Meta found that these seven companies’ services were used against and harmed vulnerable individuals such as activists, journalists, and minorities.
The surveillance companies claimed their spyware and hacking tools were only used to target and help catch criminals and terrorists.
The social media giant alerted people targeted with their surveillance tools (around 50,000 Facebook users) and shared its findings with other platforms, security researchers, and policymakers to take appropriate measures.
According to Citizen Labs, some of the people targeted with such surveillance tools had their devices infected with more than one spyware strain and, in some cases, by several attackers.
Facebook has published a full threat report according to which the seven surveillance-for-hire entities whose activity was disrupted are:
- Cobwebs Technologies (Surveillance chain phases: reconnaissance, engagement)
- Cognyte (Surveillance chain phases: reconnaissance, engagement)
- Black Cube (Surveillance chain phases: reconnaissance, engagement, exploitation)
- Bluehawk CI (Surveillance chain phases: reconnaissance, engagement, exploitation)
- BellTroX (Surveillance chain phases: reconnaissance, engagement, exploitation)
- Cytrox (Surveillance chain phases: primarily exploitation)
- An unknown entity in China (Surveillance chain phases: primarily reconnaissance, exploitation)
If it is possible to collectively tackle this threat earlier in the surveillance chain, it would help stop the harm before it gets to its final, most serious stage of compromising people’s devices and accounts.
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