Apple and Meta gave information to hackers disguised as police, says agency

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Meta, the parent company of Facebook, handed over user information to cyber pirates posing as law enforcement officers last year, a company source said on Wednesday.

The attackers were able to obtain details such as physical addresses or phone numbers with falsified “emergency data requests”, said the source, who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the matter.

Hackers use e-mails or websites linked to the police or government to obtain the information, as it is “an urgent matter, life or death”, wrote on Tuesday (28) the internet expert Brian Krebs.

Bloomberg news agency reported that Apple also handed over user information in response to falsified orders. Apple and Meta have not formally confirmed the incidents, but have issued statements on how they respond to requests for information.

When officers want data on the owner of a social media account or an associated phone, they must deliver a court order or an official citation, Krebs wrote.

But in urgent cases they can make an “emergency data request”, which “largely escapes any official review and does not require the requester to present a court-approved document”.

The expert also indicated that the lack of a single national system for this type of request is one of the biggest existing problems, because each company ends up dealing with cases in its own way.

“To complicate matters, there are tens of thousands of jurisdictions around the world – around 18,000 in the US alone – and the only thing hackers need to be successful is to be able to hack into a police email account,” he added.

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves

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