Apart from being an entertainment and social platform, Facebook has found new threat group emerging each day to attack certain people and communities. Insult and threats through social media creates a mental agony among the users. Laws are being implemented in every country to take severe action against these malicious hackers if they try to spread hate speech or question the dignity of a person. The social media authorities are liable to take a strong stand against these anti-social people who exist as a threat to the society.
Recently when Donald Trump decided to spread violence in social media, the authorities took a firm decision to block every social media accounts of Trump so as to stop social rage being spread.
As Facebook is banned in China, the developers find it difficult to gather information about the Chinese hacking campaigns against the country’s minority groups Uyghur. Constantly spreading negativity and hate against a particular community make other people to start hating them even if they are innocent with a cause.
The security researchers have found that people belonging to this community are widespread among different countries like Canada, Australia, Syria, Kazakhstan, United States and Turkey. As per the evidence the attack was conducted by a Chinese hacking group called the “Evil Eye”. These groups have been constantly targeting the Uyghur community.
The members of the cyber group used impersonated accounts in Facebook who were disguised as students, activist, journalists etc. Their main action is to send malicious links to the people belonging to the minor community.
Once Facebook was informed about these threat groups, they were constantly monitoring their activities and their efforts to spread malware and track Uyghur’s activity.
The cyber espionage investigating officer at Facebook appraised that the campaign was extremely a targeted one. He told that these groups were behind these communities for a long-time and were focussing on their geo location, languages they speak and the operating system they use.
The other name for Evil Eye is Earth Empura or Poison carp. These groups were formed in 2019 and mainly targeted on digital assaults on Uyghur. This group deployed numerous techniques to bring down the community.
Recently, they distributed malware through fakely created news websites of Uyghur. This attempt affected a certain people making them compromise their personal data. The main intention of spreading the malware was to initiate watering hole attacks. For iOS operating system they designed a special malware called ‘Insomnia’.
The attackers also placed their trap in play stores for the android version users. They created fake Uyghur-related apps which included dictionary and prayer app. These applications were embedded with malware strains like Action spy and Plugin Phantom.
Facebook conducted a thorough investigation to check the origin of these malwares and they ended at the doorstep of two development firms, Beijing Best United Technology Co. Ltd and Dalian 9Rush Technology Co. Ltd. Facebook believes that these organizations has some connection with these attacks. They also got evidence that the PRC government is supporting these groups to spread cyber espionage activities.
Even now, Facebook has no idea of what the intention of the group was but as a preventive measure Facebook blocked the associated domains of these groups and removed the suspected accounts and informed the users about these accounts.
China is implanting hidden malwares in all of their application to leak personal information. This is the main reason why most of the countries banned Tik-Tok last year.
Secure your Facebook account
Signs that your Facebook account is hacked:
- When your friends receive messages from your account without your knowledge.
- When you find unrelated post in your wall.
- When you find some changes in your personal information.
- Friend request automatically sent to strangers.
- When you find your impersonated account with the same profile picture and details.
How to protect your Facebook account
- Ensure you provide a strong and secure password.
- Use unpredictable login credentials.
- Enable two factor authentications.
- Enable privacy settings.
- Never open suspicious links or attachments.
- Never accept friend request from strangers.