Four Israeli companies are at the center of a new enforcement activity of Meta (Formerly Facebook) Against Technologies Cyber Exploiting weaknesses of users for various intelligence needs. If NSO Accused by Meta of hacking into its social networking accounts, and also being sued by it, the company is now pointing the finger of blame at Cognite, Black Cube, Cobwebs and Blackhawk – four offensive cyber companies set up by Israelis and around the world – because they took advantage of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp for impersonating and tracking users.
In addition to collecting intelligence through user dubbing, the companies are accused of manipulating the download of malware to the computer and the phone in order to break into them. In other words, these companies achieve through social engineering and a variety of human manipulations, what NSO’s Pegasus Trojan horse software achieves without contact and with sophisticated technological means.
The activity is the result of months of research conducted by Facebook on seven companies, four of which are Israeli. Meta focuses on three phases of improper intelligence activity, she claims: activating technology to automatically collect information about social network users from a variety of actions and sources; Contact and trust to get users to perform various actions such as downloading malware or providing valuable information;
Exploiting users, for example through phishing attacks designed to get them to provide usernames and passwords. These can eventually lead to hacking into devices and networks. Of the four Israeli companies, Cognite and Cobwebs are credited with the follow-up and contact-making stages, while Blackhawk and BlackCube are credited with all three stages.
“Those ‘cyber mercenaries’ claim that their service is designed to track down terrorists and criminals, but our few months of research have concluded that they also allow indiscriminate monitoring of journalists, political activists and critics of authoritarian regimes, families of opposition figures and human rights activists.” Written in a report released by Meta.
Managers at these companies said in closed conversations that they do not recognize the closure of Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram accounts of employees or managers. In many cases, Facebook has contented itself with closing fake profiles, company pages and a few executives. In 2019, Facebook closed the personal Facebook and Instagram accounts of NSO employees, but a year later, following a ruling by the Tel Aviv District Court, the accounts of one employee were restored, while the request of five other employees was denied after failing to file an affidavit. The accounts.
At this point, Meta is content with a number of actions that include closing the accounts of hundreds of customers, executives and fake profiles associated with these companies, as well as sending Cease & Desist letters, US law requests for companies to stop and cease certain activities. In addition, Meta continues to engage in efforts with academia researchers and government officials to formulate additional moves toward these companies. In addition to the four Israeli companies, Meta has also taken sanctions against three other companies: Indian BellTroX, Cytrox from northern Macedonia, and an anonymous Chinese company.
Cognite: “Among the targets for surveillance are also journalists and politicians”
Cognate became an independent offensive cyber company after being split nearly a year ago by Morrint, which serves the civilian sector. The company is active in Israel and has a large development center in Bulgaria, along with other sites such as Cyprus, Romania, Brazil and the United States.
“We have removed 100 Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to Cognyte and its customers,” the report said. Social and information gathering about users. Our investigation brought up clients in Israel, Serbia, Kenya, Morocco, Mexico, Jordan, Thailand and Indonesia. Among the targets to follow are journalists and politicians around the world. “
Blackhawk CIA: “Profiles impersonated Fox reporters for the purpose of fooling people into giving them interviews”
“We have removed 100 accounts attributed to Blackhawk – an Israeli company with offices in the United Kingdom and the United States,” the report said. “BlueHawk CI sells a variety of custom follow-up activities, including social engineering, gathering legal information about people, and managing fake profiles in order to fool them and get them to install malware. The people behind the company showed determination – and they kept coming back to our networks. We downloaded dozens of accounts for them. “
“The fake profiles pretended to be journalists working for real news networks, like Fox News in the US and La Stampa in Italy, in order to fool people into providing them with videotaped interviews. As reported in the Daily Beast, some meta-calculations were intended for political rivals of the rulers of the Ras al-Khaimah Princesses in the UAE. “Others have tried to manipulate Qatari figures, as well as politicians and businessmen in the Middle East.”
Black Cube: “Tracking Persons from the World of Academy, Media and Law in Russia”
“We removed 300 Facebook and Instagram accounts attributed to Black Cube, an Israeli company with offices in the UK, Israel and Spain,” the report said. “Black Cube provides surveillance services that include social engineering and intelligence gathering. It has managed fake identities sewn for its own purposes, some of which included predictions for university graduates, human rights activists and associations, and film and television crews.
“The imposters then try to contact us through calls in order to obtain the victim’s email address, presumably in favor of phishing attacks. Black Cube tries to shield these tactics by performing many other actions that drown out the malicious activity in the ‘noise’ of seemingly innocent behavior on the social network .
“Our investigation located a variety of private clients, organizations, and law firms around the world. The follow-up included workers from many sectors such as medicine, mining, and energy. The follow-up also included associations and organizations in Africa, Eastern Europe, South America and Palestinian activists. “People from academia, the media, real estate, telecom, high-tech, consulting, law and finance in Russia.”
BlackCube said: “BlackCube does not engage in phishing or hacking and does not operate in the cyber worlds at all. BlackCube is an intelligence company that uses daily legal investigative methods (through human agents – AG) to obtain evidence for litigation in court and arbitration. Black Cube works with the world’s leading law firms in proving bribery, exposing corruption, and restoring hundreds of millions in smuggled assets by court order. “Black Cube operates under the legal advice it has received in each of the countries in which it operates in order to ensure that its activities are in accordance with local law.”
KobeWebs: “Tracking Activists, Government Officials and Opposition in Hong Kong”
According to Meta, it has removed over 200 accounts operated by CovWeb and their customers worldwide. The company was founded in Israel and has offices in the United States. Social engineering practice aimed at accessing closed communities and forums, aiming to encourage people to disclose information. It is not just about tracking suspects for homeland security purposes – it is also about tracking down activists, opposition figures and senior government officials in Hong Kong and Mexico. Closed accounts include customers in Bangladesh, Hong Kong, the United States, New Zealand, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Poland.
No response was received from Cognate, Blackhawk and Covweb.