Russian hacker group Ghostwriter has compromised several Ukrainian Facebook accounts to spread disinformation. The accounts allegedly belong to Ukrainian journalists, politicians and military personnel, among others, according to Facebook parent company Meta. Forty fake accounts have since been removed.
According to Meta, the Russian hacker group GhostWriter is behind the attacks. Back in September 2021, the European Union warned about this hacker group because of Russian involvement in "malicious cyber activities.
Russian hackers tried to hack Ukrainian military personnel and other prominent figures. They did this by cracking e-mail addresses. They sent emails with malicious links. After compromising a target's email, they broke into social media accounts. They then used these accounts to post fake news.
On the Facebook accounts taken over, the hackers posed as Ukrainian journalists and experts. Among other things, they posted YouTube videos portraying the Ukrainian military as weak. They also showed videos in which soldiers surrendered to the Russian army.
In recent years, we have been reading more and more fake news on social media. The Netherlands is also experiencing disinformation. Netwerk Mediawijsheid launched the website isdatechtzo.nl in early February to increase knowledge about fake news. On this site you can read what fake news is and how it is spread.
The hacked accounts used for the phishing attempts have since been blocked by Meta. The social media platform has taken offline a network of 40 fake accounts from Russia and Ukraine.
"We are taking extensive measures to combat the spread of misinformation by expanding our factchecking capabilities in Russian and Ukrainian," Meta said. The company has also added features in Ukraine to keep users safe. For example, users can lock their Facebook profiles and can remove the ability to view and search friend lists. Users themselves can also take steps to better protect themselves. Meta recommends using two-step verification for an extra layer of security.
Meta has restricted access to several accounts in Ukraine, including those of some Russian state media, at the request of the government of Ukraine. YouTube and Twitter have also blocked Russian state media from users from Ukraine in recent days.
Google has banned Russian state media from making money from ads since this weekend.
