Cobwebs, an Israeli startup pseudo-Tech company, activates counterfeit accounts for its clients that conduct surveillance online, including on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Twitter. For example, the clients can collect information on activists, politicians and government officials around the world who are strategical people in their socities. The counterfeit accounts can join communities and forums, tricking people to reveal personal data and later hacking the targets’ phones or computer. Cobwebs known as has clients in US, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
Meta named the Israeli companies next to Cobwebs, such as Cognyte, Bluehawk and Black Cube, as well as North Macedonia’s Cytrox (which is apparently Israeli-owned), India-based firm BellTroX and “an unknown entity in China.” They are described as belonging to a “global surveillance-for-hire industry” whose methods are similar to that of the Israeli company NSO Group Technologies.
Meta said “Given the severity of their violations, we have banned them from our services,” and added “We also alerted around 50,000 people who we believe were targeted by these malicious activities worldwide, using the alert system we launched in 2015. We recently updated it to provide people with more granular details about the types of targeting and the actor behind it so they can take steps to protect their accounts, depending on the phase of the surveillance attack chain we detect in each case.”
The cybersecurity industry operates under the radar for the most part. While most companies don’t specialize in sophisticated hacking tools like NSO, the targets and methods are similar. These companies make sure they operate in a legally gray area and consider themselves legitimate intelligence-gathering firms. “Find some dirt on him for me,” CEOs and politicians around the world might tell their people – who then contact the Israeli spyware purveyors. The cybersecurity companies gather intelligence by exploiting the platforms owned by Meta – WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. This lets Meta’s investigators identify the targets, clients and method of operation.
Cognyte corp. similar to Cobwebs, sells tools to manage counterfeit accounts on social media sites from Facebook to YouTube to Russia’s Vkontakte. The tools, Meta says, allow clients “to social-engineer people and collect data.” To destroy their opponents, most of the oppressor political leaders and their upholders in different sectors of different countries, consult such cyber crime corps.
Cognyte and other corps, work in a way, they get the victim to, for example, reveal sensitive details or click on a malicious link. Cognyte’s clients are located in countries including Israel, Colombia, Kenya, Morocco, Jordan and Indonesia. Among the targets: journalists and politicians. Targets have been identified mostly in the medical industry, mining, energy and among nonprofit groups. Other targets have included Palestinian activists, people in the Russian media, and experts in academia, high tech and finance.