Facebook owner says Ukraine’s military and politicians are targets of hacking campaign

Meta said a group of hackers used Facebook to target some public figures in Ukraine, including prominent military officials, politicians and a journalist, amid Russia’s invasion of the country. The company owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The company said it separately removed a network of about 40 fake accounts, groups and pages on Facebook and Instagram that operated in Russia and Ukraine targeting people in Ukraine for violating its rules against coordinated inauthentic behavior.

A Twitter spokesperson said it also suspended more than a dozen accounts and blocked the sharing of several links for violating its rules against platform manipulation and spam. He further stated that his ongoing investigation indicated that the accounts originated in Russia and were trying to stop the public conversation about the conflict in Ukraine.

In a blog post on Monday, Meta attributed the hacking efforts to a group known as Ghostwriter, which the company said gained access to the targets’ social media accounts. Meta said the hackers tried to post YouTube videos of accounts that portrayed Ukrainian troops as weakened, including a video that claimed to show Ukrainian soldiers emerging from a forest and hoisting a white flag of surrender.

Ukrainian cybersecurity officials said on Friday that hackers from neighboring Belarus were attacking the private email addresses of Ukrainian military personnel “and related individuals”, blaming a group codenamed “UNC1151”. US cybersecurity firm FireEye has already connected the group to Ghostwriter activities.