Social media giant Meta has taken down over 40 accounts operated by Indian firm CyberRoot Risk Advisory, allegedly involved in hacking-for-hire services. Meta also took down a network of about 900 fake accounts on Instagram and Facebook operated from China by an unknown entity.
According to Meta, CyberRoot used fake accounts to fabricate personas to gain trust with the people they targeted around the world. These personas impersonated journalists, business executives and media personalities. These accounts were focused on collecting data of people in Myanmar, India, Taiwan, the US and China, including military personnel, pro-democracy activists, government employees, politicians and journalists.
A threat report by Meta stated, “We removed a network of more than 40 accounts on Facebook and Instagram operated by an Indian firm called CyberRoot Risk Advisory Private. Rather than directly sharing malware on our apps, this group’s activity manifested primarily in social engineering and phishing, often intended to trick people into giving up their credentials to various online accounts across the Internet.”
Meta found CyberRoot targeted people around the world involved in various industries, including cosmetic surgery and law firms in Australia, real estate and investment companies in Russia, private equity firms and pharmaceutical companies in the US, environmental and anti-corruption activists in Angola, gambling entities in the UK, and mining companies in New Zealand.
In some cases, it was reported that CyberRoot also created accounts that were very identical to accounts connected to their targets like their friends and family, with only slightly changed usernames in an attempt to trick people into engaging.
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