According to a new cybersecurity report from Facebook’s parent company Meta, hack attempts from Russia and Belarus have increased. Facebook stated that hackers especially attacked the military personnel accounts of Ukraine and called on the army to lay down arms.
Facebook’s quarterly security report revealed the cyber espionage and social media operations of the attackers, which were determined to be linked to Russia and Belarus. It was reported that Russia attacked not only physically, but also on social media.
Attempt to hack the Facebook accounts of Ukrainian soldiers
Meta’s latest report referred to the Ghostwriter group, which is known to be associated with Belarus. Detecting attempts to target Ukrainian army personnel, Facebook said it targeted users via email.
According to Facebook’s statement, the group tried to hack the Facebook accounts of dozens of Ukrainian military personnel. In a few attacks, there was a post that “calls the army to surrender” by pretending that these posts are from account holders.
Meta, in its report, said that it blocked these posts from being shared and made the following statement:
“We detected the return attempt of people we removed in December 2020 and which we saw linked to the past activities of the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA). And we blocked them from being on Facebook.”
Meta also announced that it has removed 200 accountable gangs identified as Russia-based, which often falsely report users in Ukraine on violations such as hate speech or bullying.
The security report also deciphered the war in Ukraine, tens of thousands of accounts defrauding users and trying to make money by redirecting people to scam websites. Meta said it removed these pages and groups.
In March, Facebook said it would seek to continue operating in Russia to provide a platform to counter the propaganda of Russian state-controlled media. But while Russia banned Facebook and Instagram, it slowed Twitter down.
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