A group of Chinese hackers has been blocked by Facebook which were targeting the Uyghur activists through the platform. They compromised their security by using the surveillance software.
On Wednesday, it was announced by a social media company that fake websites and Facebook accounts were used by Chinese hackers and tried breaking into computers and smartphones of Uyghur dissidents, activists, and journalists.
There were less than 100 fake accounts that were detected and disrupted by Facebook. The group accounts were also removed. Those were notified whose accounts were compromised, and malware domains were also blocked.
It was stated by Facebook that there were targets of almost less than 500 cyberespionage accounts of Uyghurs living in China from the Xinjiang region, which are currently living in Canada, Australia, Syria, Kazakhstan, United States, and Turkey.
From Northwest of China, the Uyghurs are in a Muslim minority group. Many nations have been doomed as a systematic campaign of repression, and more than 1 million Uyghurs are thought to be held in a large network of camps. Beijing’s treatment of Uyghurs was referred to as genocide by the United States.
The Uyghur Diaspora has been highly involved in supporting the interests of their community in China which had drawn the ire of the state of China called Beijing.
What did the hackers actually do?
Websites were set up using the same domains of popular Uyghur new sites to trick targets towards clicking links that were trapped with malware, as reported by Facebook.
The cyberespionage of Facebook unit told in a blog post that the group was using different tactics so they can identify its targets and infect their devices with the help of malware to enable surveillance.
The group made websites to impersonate the app stores by featuring Uyghur themed apps which actually had malware in them.
It was used to share links to malicious websites and On the platform, The malware was not directly shared. As stated by Facebook.
In the industry of cyber security the hackers are known as Evil eye or Earth Empusa according to the Facebook’s investigation.