Phishing Attacks Haunted Social Media Users, Meta Immediately Sues Perpetrators

JAKARTA - Not wanting to remain silent, the ranks of their applications have been tarnished, Meta is reported to have filed a federal lawsuit in a California, United States (US) court to reveal who is the person running the phishing scam.

The legal action, Meta said, was aimed at disrupting phishing attacks designed to trick people into sharing their login credentials on fake login pages of Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

According to reports, such phishing attacks are able to lure unsuspecting victims to websites that appear genuine or official, but are actually fake. The website then entices victims to enter their sensitive information, such as passwords and email addresses.

Meta said it had found more than 39,000 websites impersonating Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp login pages as part of a phishing scheme. It also notes that reports of phishing attacks have increased, hence Meta is filing this lawsuit to take legal action against the attacks.

“On this website, people are asked to enter their username and password, which were collected by the Defendants. As part of the attack, Defendants used relay services to redirect internet traffic to phishing websites in a way that obscured their attack infrastructure," said Meta's director of litigation and platform enforcement, Jessica Romero, as quoted by TechCrunch, Tuesday, December 21.

"This allows them to hide the real location of the phishing website, and the identity of their online hosting provider and the accused."

However, Meta does not stay silent because it is very detrimental to its users. Evidently last March, Romero stated Meta began working with relay services to suspend thousands of URLs hosting phishing websites. Meta plans to continue to collaborate with online service providers to disrupt phishing attacks.

Where the service provider will proactively block instances of abuse to the security community, domain name registrars, and others. Not only that, they can also share phishing URLs so other platforms can block them too.

"This lawsuit is one more 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 said.

For information, this is not the first time that Meta has filed a lawsuit against phishing scams on its platform. Last month, the company took action against four hacker groups from Syria and Pakistan.

The group uses phishing links to manipulate users into giving up their Facebook credentials. Earlier this year in March, the company also took action against a group of hackers in China known as Earth Empusa or Evil Eye.

Meta acknowledged, the lawsuit interfered with hackers' ability to use their infrastructure to abuse its platform. The company also took similar action against hackers in Bangladesh and Vietnam in 2020.