Еве нѐ и во компјутерски криминал.
RT News, [12/16/21 10:44 PM]
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Facebook Warns 50,000 Targeted by Spy-For-Hire Companies
Facebook has banned six firms and a Chinese law enforcement supplier from the platform.
50K users have told they may have been targeted. Meta has informed the authorities, and it follows legal action against the infamous firm behind Pegasus, NSO Group, for using WhatsApp to infiltrate devices.
People in more than 100 countries have been affected. One of the companies said to have been removed is Cytrox - a North Macedonian developer of iPhone and Android malware.
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https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/spyware-find-highlights-depth-hacker-hire-industry-81798858
Facebook’s owner, Meta, announced on Thursday a flurry of takedowns of accounts affiliated with seven surveillance-for-hire firms — including Cytrox — and notified about 50,000 people in more than 100 countries including journalists, dissidents and clergy who may have been targeted by them. It said it deleted about 300 Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to Cytrox, which appears to operate out of North Macedonia.
Cytrox's last known CEO, Ivo Malinkovski, could not be located for comment. He scrubbed his LinkedIn page earlier this month to remove mention of his Cytrox affiliation -- though a coffee mug with the company name was in his profile photo. The business intelligence website Crunchbase says Cytrox was founded in a Tel Aviv suburb in 2017.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/16/cytrox-predator-phone-hacking-meta/
Predator — unlike Pegasus — lacks the ability to silently infect a phone without any user interaction, but it makes up for that with persistence.
...
“Based on the slapdash nature of Predator’s code, it’s clear we’re looking at the B Team here,” said Bill Marczak, one of the Citizen Lab researchers who discovered and analyzed the Predator malware.
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Citizen Lab said it was likely that Predator is being used by government customers in Armenia, Greece, Serbia, Indonesia, Madagascar and Oman — plus Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which are known to target their critics with mobile spyware. Meta, meanwhile, said its investigation found Predator customers in Vietnam, the Philippines and Germany.
Cytrox CEO Ivo Malinkovski could not be reached for comment; an email sent prior to publication bounced as undelivered.