People being silhouetted while posing with mobile devices in front of a screen projected with a Facebook logo, in this photo illustration taken in Zenica on October 29, 2014. REUTERS / Dado Ruvic / File Photo
Facebook says it has launched a long-running cyber-espionage campaign led by Palestinian intelligence, which has disrupted spies posing as journalists, and the deployment of a greasy app for submitting human rights stories.
In a report published on Wednesday, Facebook (FB.O) accuses the cyber wing of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service (PSS), which is loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas, of conducting a rudimentary burglary operation that targeted Palestinian reporters, activists. . and dissidents, as well as other groups in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.
PSS spokesperson Ikrimah Thabet dismissed Facebook’s allegations, saying: “We respect the media, we work within the law that governs our work, and we work according to law and order. We respect freedoms, privacy and confidentiality of information. “
He said the service had good relations with journalists and the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.
Mike Dvilyanski, Facebook’s head of cyber espionage investigations, told Reuters prior to the publication of the report that the campaign’s methods were rude, but “we do see it as persistent.”
The PSS has intensified its activities over the past six months, Dvilyanski said. He said Facebook believes the organization used about 300 fake or compromised accounts to target about 800 people in general.
None of the targets were identified by name. Facebook said it had issued individual alerts to concerned users via its platform and removed the rogue accounts.
Attributing malicious activity online is notoriously difficult, but Dvilyanski said the world’s largest social network “has several data points linking this group of activities to the PSS, and our confidence in this attribution is quite high.”
According to the Facebook report, the techniques used by the PSS were strongly focused on misleading users to download espionage software from the shelf, for example by creating dummy Facebook accounts with pictures of attractive young women. Facebook said the hackers also posed as journalists and in some cases tried to get targets to download spyware covered as secure chat programs, or an app to submit human rights stories for publication.
Some of their Facebook pages have posted memes, for example to criticize Russian foreign policy in the Middle East to attract specific followers.
Facebook also said they were taking action against another long-running campaign linked to another burglary group, often referred to as ‘Arid Viper’. It did not say who was behind the group.
Facebook said Arid Viper operated fake Facebook and Instagram accounts and more than a hundred malicious websites, and also expanded to iOS surveillance software. The targets included Palestinian government officials and security forces.
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