Staff Reporter :
Social media platform Facebook on Friday revealed that two Bangladeshi hacker groups had targeted local activists, journalists, and religious minorities and migrants to compromise their accounts.
The hacker groups are – Don’s Team also known as Defence of Nation and the Crime Research and Analysis Foundation, a statement published by Facebook reveals.
They appeared to be operating across a number of internet services, it said.
Don’s Team and CRAF collaborated to report people on Facebook for violations of community standards, including alleged
impersonation, intellectual property infringements, nudity and terrorism, Facebook said.
‘They also hacked people’s accounts and pages, and used some of these compromised accounts for their own operational purposes, including to amplify their content,’ it said.
On at least one occasion, after a page admin’s account was compromised, they removed the remaining admins to take over and disable the page, the statement issued by Facebook head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher and its cyber threat intelligence manager Mike Dvilyanski said.
They said that their investigation suggested that these targeted hacking attempts were likely carried out through a number of off-platform tactics including email and device compromise and abuse of their account recovery process.
‘To disrupt this activity, we removed the accounts and pages behind this operation,’ said the statement.
‘We shared information about this group with our industry partners so they too can detect and stop this activity,’ it said.
‘We encourage people to remain vigilant and take steps to protect their accounts, avoid clicking on suspicious links and downloading software from untrusted sources that can compromise their devices and information stored on them,’ said Facebook.
Apart from Bangladesh, the social media platform also identified another advanced persistent threat actor based in Vietna, APT32, said Facebook.
APT32 targeted Vietnamese human rights activists locally and abroad, various foreign governments including those in Laos and Cambodia, non-governmental organisations, news agencies, and a number of businesses across information technology, hospitality, agriculture and commodities, hospitals, retail, the auto industry, and mobile services with malware.
Our investigation linked this activity to CyberOne Group, an IT company in Vietnam – also known as CyberOne Security, CyberOne Technologies, HànhTinh Company Limited, Planet and Diacauso.
They said that as their industry partners had previously reported, APT32 had deployed a wide range of adversarial tactics across the internet. They have been tracking and taking action against this group for several years, the group further added.
Social media platform Facebook on Friday revealed that two Bangladeshi hacker groups had targeted local activists, journalists, and religious minorities and migrants to compromise their accounts.
The hacker groups are – Don’s Team also known as Defence of Nation and the Crime Research and Analysis Foundation, a statement published by Facebook reveals.
They appeared to be operating across a number of internet services, it said.
Don’s Team and CRAF collaborated to report people on Facebook for violations of community standards, including alleged
impersonation, intellectual property infringements, nudity and terrorism, Facebook said.
‘They also hacked people’s accounts and pages, and used some of these compromised accounts for their own operational purposes, including to amplify their content,’ it said.
On at least one occasion, after a page admin’s account was compromised, they removed the remaining admins to take over and disable the page, the statement issued by Facebook head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher and its cyber threat intelligence manager Mike Dvilyanski said.
They said that their investigation suggested that these targeted hacking attempts were likely carried out through a number of off-platform tactics including email and device compromise and abuse of their account recovery process.
‘To disrupt this activity, we removed the accounts and pages behind this operation,’ said the statement.
‘We shared information about this group with our industry partners so they too can detect and stop this activity,’ it said.
‘We encourage people to remain vigilant and take steps to protect their accounts, avoid clicking on suspicious links and downloading software from untrusted sources that can compromise their devices and information stored on them,’ said Facebook.
Apart from Bangladesh, the social media platform also identified another advanced persistent threat actor based in Vietna, APT32, said Facebook.
APT32 targeted Vietnamese human rights activists locally and abroad, various foreign governments including those in Laos and Cambodia, non-governmental organisations, news agencies, and a number of businesses across information technology, hospitality, agriculture and commodities, hospitals, retail, the auto industry, and mobile services with malware.
Our investigation linked this activity to CyberOne Group, an IT company in Vietnam – also known as CyberOne Security, CyberOne Technologies, HànhTinh Company Limited, Planet and Diacauso.
They said that as their industry partners had previously reported, APT32 had deployed a wide range of adversarial tactics across the internet. They have been tracking and taking action against this group for several years, the group further added.
