Federal lawsuit of meta files to uncover individuals running a phishing scam on its platforms – TechCrunch

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Meta, formerly known as Facebook, announced today that it has filed a federal lawsuit in a California court to take action to find individuals running a phishing scam. The company says the lawsuit aims to stop phishing attacks designed to trick people into sharing their login credentials on fake login pages for Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

For context, phishing attacks lure unsuspecting victims to websites that look legitimate but are actually deceptively fake. The websites then convince victims to enter their sensitive information, such as passwords and email addresses. Meta claims to have found more than 39,000 websites impersonating the login pages of Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp as part of the phishing scheme. It also notes that reports of phishing attacks are on the rise and that it is filing this lawsuit to take legal action against these attacks.

“On these websites, people were asked to enter their usernames and passwords, which the defendants collected,” wrote Jessica Romero, director of the Meta platform’s application and litigation, in a blog post. “As part of the attacks, the defendants used a forwarding service to redirect Internet traffic to phishing websites in order to obscure their attack infrastructure. This allowed them to hide the true location of phishing websites and the identities of their online hosting providers and defendants. “

Romero says that in March Meta began working with the forwarding service to suspend thousands of URLs hosting phishing websites. Meta plans to continue working with online service providers to stop phishing attacks. It finds that it works to proactively block abuse cases for the security community, domain name registrars, and others. The company says it also shares phishing URLs so other platforms can block them as well.

“This lawsuit is a further step in our ongoing efforts to protect people’s safety and privacy, send a clear message to those who try to abuse our platform, and increase the accountability of those who abuse technology.” Romero wrote in the blog post.

Meta’s latest cause isn’t the first time the company has cracked down on phishing scams on its platforms. Last month, Meta revealed it had taken action against four different hacker groups from Syria and Pakistan. The groups used phishing links to manipulate users into giving up their Facebook credentials. Earlier this year, in March, the company also took action against a hacker group in China known as Earth Empusa or Evil Eye. Meta, which was known at the time as Facebook, claimed to have disrupted hackers’ ability to use their infrastructure to abuse its platform. The company also took similar action against hackers in Bangledesh and Vietnam in 2020.

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