Facebook Accuses Company of Surveillance for Dictatorships’ Favor
Facebook owner Meta says it has banned seven surveillance companies for targeting users on its platforms.
A new report by Meta published on Thursday, December 16, accused surveillance firms of actions like creating fake accounts, befriending targets and using hacking methods to harvest information.
The company accused the companies of targeting individuals including journalists and human rights activists.
“While these ‘cyber mercenaries’ often claim that their services only target criminals and terrorists, our months-long investigation concluded that targeting is in fact indiscriminate and includes journalists, dissidents, critics of authoritarian regimes, families of opposition and human rights activists,” Facebook’s Meta said.
The companies targeted people in more than 100 countries on behalf of their clients, Meta mentioned.
Israeli Spies on Arabs
Meta’s move comes amid broader steps by U.S. agencies, including technology companies, lawmakers, and President Joe Biden's administration against spy software development companies, particularly Israel's NSO.
NSO was blacklisted earlier this month, weeks after reports revealed that the Israeli company's programs were being used against civil society, and Meta is currently suing NSU in a U.S. court.
Among the companies that Meta accused of piracy were NSO, Black Cube, and a European company called Cytrox. Canadian website Citizen Lab gave more insights about the attacks caused by these companies.
“Two Egyptians, one of which is exiled politician Ayman Nour, were hacked with Predator spyware, built and sold by the previously little-known mercenary spyware developer Cytrox,” CL said.
The phone of Ayman Nour was simultaneously infected with both Cytrox’s Predator and NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, operated by two different government clients.
Both targets were hacked with Predator in June 2021, and the spyware was able to infect the then-latest version (14.6) of Apple’s iOS operating system using single-click links sent via WhatsApp.
“We conducted Internet scanning for Predator spyware servers and found likely Predator customers in Armenia, Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Madagascar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Serbia,” the Canadian website noted.
Cytrox was reported to be part of Intellexa, the so-called “Star Alliance of Spyware,” which was formed to compete with NSO Group, and which describes itself as “EU-based and regulated, with six sites and R&D labs throughout Europe.”
Nour's Revolution Tomorrow party blamed Egypt and another unnamed Arab state for hacking its leader's phone.
Noor accuses the Egyptian government of spying on him. In an interview with Reuters from Istanbul, Nur said he had long questioned whether he was an observer from officials there.
"For the first time, I have proof," Nour said. The Egyptian government did not respond to a request for comment on Nour's remarks.
Citizen Lab says it has evidence to confirm to a moderate to high degree that these cyber-attacks were carried out by the Egyptian government, because Egypt is among Cytrox customers, and the messages that caused the breach were sent from Egyptian numbers.
Disclose Documents
Meta’s report coincides with French NGO Disclose’s investigation that linked Egyptian Sisi’s repression of his opponents with France authorities.
According to Disclose, arms giant Dassault, a subsidiary of Thales, and the company Nexa Technologies sold a mass surveillance system to the dictatorship of Field Marshal Sisi. With the blessing of the French state.
Nearly 65,000 opponents are reportedly languishing in the regime's jails, while 3,000 others have "disappeared" after being arrested, according to the US State Department.
An unprecedented repression of Egyptian civil society facilitated by a massive cyber-surveillance system installed by three French companies, with the tacit agreement of the authorities.
“The first, called Nexa Technologies, is run by the founders of Amesys, a company accused of supplying surveillance equipment to the Gaddafi dictatorship in Libya,” Disclose said.
“The second, Ercom-Suneris—a subsidiary of Thales since 2019—is known to be responsible for the security of one of Emmanuel Macron's mobile phones,” it added.
“The third is none other than Dassault Systèmes, the technology subsidiary of the French arms industry heavyweight and manufacturer of the Rafale aircraft. When contacted, Ercom-Suneris and Dassault Systèmes did not answer our questions,” it noted.
“According to our investigation, in partnership with Télérama magazine, these three technology companies came together in 2014 around a project to monitor the population outside normal boundaries. An Egyptian equivalent of the NSA.”
Nexa Technologies was in charge of installing an Internet surveillance software called “Cerebro” and Ercom-Suneris a phone tapping and geolocation device called “Cortex vortex”.
“The last piece of this massive spying construct was an ultra-powerful search engine manufactured by Dassault Systèmes. According to our information, Exalead, as it is known, made it possible to link various databases together on behalf of the MID, the regime's opaque military intelligence service,” it concluded.
