Meta Platforms (FB.O) says a hacking group has used Facebook to target a handful of public figures in Ukraine, including prominent military officials, politicians, and a journalist, amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country.
According to Reuters, Meta said in the last 48 hours it had also separately removed a network of about 40 fake accounts, groups, and pages across Facebook and Instagram that operated from Russia and Ukraine targeting people in Ukraine, for violating its rules against coordinated inauthentic behavior.
A Twitter spokesperson said it had also suspended more than a dozen accounts and blocked the sharing of several links for violating its rules against platform manipulation and spam. It said its ongoing investigation indicated the accounts originated in Russia and were attempting to disrupt the public conversation around the conflict in Ukraine.
In a blog post on Monday, Meta attributed the hacking efforts to a group known as Ghostwriter, which it said successfully gained access to the targets’ social media accounts. Meta said the hackers attempted to post YouTube videos from the accounts portraying Ukrainian troops as weakened, including one video which claimed to show Ukrainian soldiers coming out of a forest and flying a white flag of surrender.
Ukrainian cybersecurity officials said on Friday that hackers from neighboring Belarus were targeting the private email addresses of Ukrainian military personnel “and related individuals,” blaming a group code-named “UNC1151.”
The U.S. cybersecurity firm FireEye has previously connected the group with Ghostwriter activities. Meta’s security team said it had taken steps to secure targeted accounts and had blocked the phishing domains used by the hackers. It declined to give the names of any of the targets but said it had alerted users where possible.
RN