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Facebook says it has disrupted the activities of two Palestinian advanced persistent threat groups that targeted victims across the Middle East as part of cyber espionage campaigns.
Facebook threat intelligence analysts say they discovered campaigns linked to AridViper, an espionage group that has been active since 2015, and Preventive Security Service, which is linked to the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s intelligence services.
The groups used Android and Windows malware and advanced social engineering tactics to target journalists, human rights activists and military groups in Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Libya for cyber espionage, Facebook says.
This Week in Apps: An Apple event, more Clubhouse clones and an app store antitrust hearing
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020.
Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.
Facebook Blocks PA-Connected Hacking Ring Targeting Journalists, Activists
Acting from the West Bank, the group – allegedly connected to Palestinian intelligence – used ‘low-sophistication malware’ to spy on its targets.
(The Media Line) In a report released Wednesday, Facebook detailed its actions against two hacker groups from the Palestinian territories that made use of the Facebook platform to spy on Palestinians.
According to the report, the first group targeted journalists, human rights activists and government opposition, among others, and used malware to access phones and computers for spying. This group is connected to the Palestinian Authority’s Preventive Security Service (PSS), an intelligence agency tasked with internal security.
Facebook Busts Palestinian Hackers Operation Spreading Mobile Spyware
Facebook on Wednesday said it took steps to dismantle malicious activities perpetrated by two state-sponsored hacking groups operating out of Palestine that abused its platform to distribute malware.
The social media giant attributed the attacks to a network connected to the Preventive Security Service (PSS), the security apparatus of the State of Palestine, and another threat actor known as Arid Viper (aka Desert Falcon and APT-C-23), the latter of which is alleged to be connected to the cyber arm of Hamas.
The two digital espionage campaigns, active in 2019 and 2020, exploited a range of devices and platforms, such as Android, iOS, and Windows, with the PSS cluster primarily targeting domestic audiences in Palestine. The other set of attacks went after users in the Palestinian territories and Syria and, to a lesser extent Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and Libya.
Daniel Sonnenfeld 04/22/2021
Acting from the West Bank, the group – allegedly connected to Palestinian intelligence – used ‘low-sophistication malware’ to spy on its targets
In a report released Wednesday, Facebook detailed its actions against two hacker groups from the Palestinian territories that made use of the Facebook platform to spy on Palestinians.
According to the report, the first group targeted journalists, human rights activists and government opposition, among others, and used malware to access phones and computers for spying. This group is connected to the Palestinian Authority’s Preventive Security Service (PSS), an intelligence agency tasked with internal security.
The second group, named Arid Viper, directed its efforts at Fatah members, PA officials and members of security forces, hinting at a possible connection to Fatah-rival Hamas. This second group employed a variety of tactics, all aimed at accessing personal information on phones and computer