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Facebook Cracks Down on Israeli ‘Surveillance for Hire’ Operations
The social media giant is banning 6 companies — including Black Cube, the firm hired by Harvey Weinstein — taking down 1,500 accounts following a 6-month investigation into global spy efforts
Leaders of the Israeli cyber intelligence firm Cognyte this February celebrated their first day of trading on Nasdaq by ringing the stock exchange’s opening bell. In remarks beamed across a giant screen in New York’s Times Square, CEO Elad Sharon celebrated his company’s success, including nearly half a billion dollars in annual revenues, 2,000 employees around the world, and 1,000 clients in 100 countries — including the U.S. Department of Justice. Sharon also touted Cognyte’s virtue, claiming it provided governments and businesses the tools they need to fight terrorism and stop crime. “Our analytics software empowers our customers to save lives,” Sharon said.
But on Thursday, Facebook banned Cognyte from its platform as it released the results of a six-month investigation by the social media giant’s security researchers. According to the report, Cognyte’s customers have targeted journalists and politicians around the world. Some of those clients were located in countries with dubious records on human rights such as Colombia, Kenya, Mexico, Thailand, and Indonesia. Also Thursday, Facebook took down about 100 Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to Cognyte.
Beyond Cognyte, the Facebook report took aim at five other firms and one unnamed Chinese entity that are part of what social media giant calls the “surveillance for hire” industry. Israel, where four of the six named companies were founded, appears to be a hub of the global industry.
According to Facebook, the firms abuse social media platforms to collect intelligence, including by manipulating people into revealing information and compromising their devices. Targets included journalists, dissidents, critics of authoritarian regimes, families of opposition members, human rights activists, celebrities, and even ordinary people. In total, the company says it took down approximately 1,500 accounts that it says were part of surveillance for hire operations. The social media company also notified about 50,000 people in 100 countries that their Facebook and Instagram accounts were targets of malicious activities by the seven entities identified in the report released Thursday.
Facebook outlined a three-step process that explained how the surveillance-for-hire industry operates. In the reconnaissance phase, the companies typically scrape information about a target from across the Internet, often using fake accounts to view social media profiles, friends, and likes. Next, the fake accounts built up trust by, for example, feigning a shared interest on a Facebook group and connecting with the target in seemingly innocuous ways. Some companies stopped there, but others abused this trust to hack the target. The most sophisticated actors may send veiled hacking tools that give them instant access to all the personal information stored on a cellphone or computer.
“Companies engage in this kind of thing because they think there’s a viable business model behind it,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, told Rolling Stone. “A key part of our goal is demonstrating that, at least on our platforms, there isn’t.”
In addition to Cognyte, Facebook’s investigation names Cobwebs Technologies, Black Cube, and Bluehawk CI–all based in Israel. Also named in the report were BellTroX, a “hacking-for-hire” firm based in India, and Cytrox, a North Macdeonian company. A Chinese entity was surveilling minority groups in China’s Xingjian region, home to the country’s mostly Muslim Uighur minority, but Facebook was unable to identify the group. The Chinese entity made few mistakes and revealed little about itself. In one case, the Chinese entity’s online surveillance was paired with facial-recognition software which could allow for real-word tracking of a targets’ movements.
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