Many hacking groups take advantage of the war between Ukraine and Russia. There are lots of news and reports of cyber attacks around the world. But recently, there are reports that hackers were using their hacking skills to win the war against their enemies.
According to the new report of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, the hacking campaign dubbed "Ghostwriter" attempted to compromise dozens of Facebook accounts owned by Ukrainian military personnel and posted videos to the hacked accounts calling on the Ukrainian army to surrender.
The report stated that after the security update in February, the Ghostwriter operation, mostly carried out by the hacking group UNC1151, attempted to hack many Facebook accounts. After they successfully compromise the account, the hackers will post fake Ukrainian surrender videos. But Meta quickly removed and blocked the said video from being shared by other users.
The war has been for over 40 days now. Both sides are doing everything to survive and win the war. These kinds of attacks were said to be one of the hackers' tactics. Last March, hackers compromised television networks in Ukraine to plant fake reports. Although the statements were quickly disproved, experts believed that the primary goal of this attack was to destroy the trust of the people in the media.
Hackers also attack news outlets to spread manipulated videos of Mr. Zelensky. According to Oleksiy Makukhin, one of the experts that fight misinformation in Ukraine, the deep fake video first circulated on the app Telegram.
The video is also broadcasted on Ukraine 24, a television station operated by Media Group Ukraine. The company's spokeswoman, Olha Nosyk, later said their systems were under attack for two weeks before being hacked. But they have already strengthened the protection and applied necessary technical means to prevent another attack.
This kind of attack was surprisingly effective in taking down other people's accounts against your views or ideas. And according to my research, mass reporting attacks spiked in mid-February, just before the war started. Meta found out that the threat actors were using different fake and authentic Facebook accounts to report users for hate speech and bullying violations.
Meta later found out that these actors used a cooking-themed Facebook group to avoid being detected. The report stated that at least 50 members in the said group were doing the mass reporting activities.
Meta is still doing their best to fight the misinformation and protect its users from the attacks. Many experts also want the Ukraine people to be more aware of misinformation because the primary goal of these attacks is to frighten the civilians and put pressure on the government.
[1] Bidar, M., Sganga, N. (2022, April 7). Russian-backed hackers broke into Facebook accounts of Ukrainian military officials. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-military-officials-facebook-hackers-russia-belarus/.
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