“Cyber Mercenary” Firms Snoop on People, Meta Issues Notice

Facebook has notified around 50,000 people it believes have been targeted by “cyber mercenaries,” commercial businesses recruited by autocratic governments to spy on individuals. In the wake of mounting scrutiny of surveillance technologies, Meta Platforms announced on Thursday that it had taken steps to debar seven cyber mercenaries who it said targeted journalists, dissidents, critics of authoritarian regimes, opposition families, and human rights activists in over 100 countries “indiscriminately.” 

In a blog post, Meta, which also owns and runs Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, said it has notified the people it believes were targeted by the harmful activity. Cobwebs Technologies, Cognyte, Black Cube, Blue Hawk CI, BellTroX, Cytrox, and an unnamed Chinese firm were all targeted. Four are in Israel, one is in India, one is in North Macedonia, and the last one is in China.

The organizations which provide a variety of spyware services ranging from hacking tools for accessing mobile phones to building false social media profiles to watch targets, allegedly spied on the accounts of 50,000 users, according to the company. It also deactivated 1,500 accounts related to these companies on Facebook and Instagram.

In a statement, Jake Moore, the former director of digital forensics at a UK police unit who is now the global cybersecurity advisor at ESET, stated that removing such accounts is “absolutely important.” NSO Group is being sued by Meta for allegedly spreading Pegasus software over WhatsApp, and the US government banned the business last month.