Meta discovers cyber mercenaries targeting 50 000 persons worldwide

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 17/12/2021

Meta says it has disabled seven cyber mercenaries who targeted people across the internet in more than 100 countries. Information about them has been shared with security researchers. People who are believed to have been targeted have been informed, Meta said. These seven providers are based in China, Israel, India, and North Macedonia.

“While these “cyber mercenaries” often claim that their services only target criminals and terrorists, our months-long investigation concluded that targeting is in fact indiscriminate and includes journalists, dissidents, critics of authoritarian regimes, families of opposition and human rights activists.”

“The “surveillance-for-hire” entities we removed violated multiple Community Standards and Terms of Service. Given the severity of their violations, we have banned them from our services. To help disrupt these activities, we blocked related internet infrastructure and issued Cease and Desist letters, putting them on notice that their targeting of people has no place on our platform.”

Meta said it has alerted around 50,000 people worldwide who the company believes were targeted.

“Protecting people against cyber mercenaries operating across many platforms and national boundaries requires a collective effort from platforms, policymakers and civil society to counter the underlying market and its incentive structure. We believe a public discussion about the use of surveillance-for-hire technology is urgently needed to deter the abuse of these capabilities both among those who sell them and those who buy them, anchored in the following principles:”

• Greater transparency and oversight:There is a need for a robust international oversight that establishes transparency and “know your customer” standards for this market and holds surveillance-for-hire entities to these norms.
• Industry collaboration: Surveillance efforts manifest differently on various tech platforms, making industry collaboration critical if we want to fully understand and mitigate adversarial surveillance efforts.
• Governance and ethics: We welcome domestic and international efforts to raise accountability through legislation, export controls and regulatory actions. We also encourage broader conversations about the ethics of using these surveillance technologies by law enforcement and private companies, as well as creating effective victim protection regimes.