The tactics used by the groups include posing as journalists and independent news agencies on the Internet to provoke Russian forums, attempt to hack into dozens of Ukrainian soldiers’ Facebook accounts, and conduct coordinated campaigns to remove Russian posts from posts. social media. according to Meta.
A hacking group known as “Ghostwriter”, believed by cyber experts to be linked to Belarus, has attempted to hack into the Facebook accounts of dozens of Ukrainian soldiers, the company said.
The hackers were successful in “a handful of cases,” Meta said, and “posted videos calling on the military to surrender as if these posts came from legitimate account holders. We have blocked the sharing of these videos.”
Meta also noted that the activities of groups linked to the Russian and Belarusian governments seemed to intensify shortly before the invasion, adding that he had noticed that accounts linked to the Belarusian KGB “suddenly began to publish in Polish and English that Ukrainian troops had surrendered without “The leaders of the nation leave the country on February 24, the day Russia started the war.”
Meta also said it had removed a network of about 200 accounts operating in Russia, which had repeatedly submitted false reports about people in Ukraine and Russia in an attempt to remove them and their posts from the platform. The accounts regularly falsely reported to Meta that people in Ukraine and Russia had violated company rules on hate speech as well as other policies. This tactic, known as “mass reporting”, is commonly used by people trying to shut down their opponents’ social media accounts.
The Russian invasion brought “a huge increase in attacks on social media accounts through mass reporting,” said Vadym Hudyma, co-founder of Digital Security Lab Ukraine, an organization that helps secure the online accounts of journalists and activists.
Many of the targeted Twitter and Facebook accounts were not verified, making it more difficult to retrieve the accounts of organizations that, for example, raised money and coordinated medical supplies in response to the Russian invasion, Hudyma told CNN. “Many social media pages have been temporarily closed. We probably recovered most of them fairly quickly. But that was a mess.”
Meta also said it continues to see the use of fake profile photos in misinformation campaigns.
In an earlier announcement in February, Meta said it had discovered and closed a secret Russian-influenced operation that maintained accounts of people in Kyiv, including news editors, targeting Ukrainians.
“They claim to be based in Kyiv and present themselves as news editors, a former aviation engineer and the author of a scientific publication on hydrography – the science of water mapping,” Meta said in a blog post.
He linked the fake accounts to people who had previously been sanctioned by the US government. The accounts and sites that manage this influence function did not appear to be very successful in reaching many people, according to data surveyed by CNN.
