Facebook cracks down on covert influence networks targeting Ukraine

According to Facebook’s most recent report, the company has disrupted several covert influence operations aimed at Ukrainians and has taken steps to combat Russian propaganda about the war.

Russia and Belarus, according to the report, engaged in cyber espionage and covert influence operations online. Threat actors were interested in Ukraine’s telecom industry, defence sector, tech platforms, journalists, and activists. The company stopped a phishing campaign called Ghostwriter, which attempted to hack into Ukrainian military personnel’s Facebook accounts.

One of the measures implemented by Meta is the corporate fact-checker, an operations centre with Russian and Ukrainian speakers that monitors war-related topics on the platform. Furthermore, Meta began limiting access to Russian state-controlled media outlets and prevented them from running adverts on its networks.

Facebook has also taken down a Russian-based network that attempted to falsely report people in Ukraine and Russia for different various rule violations, including hate speech, to have their accounts and postings deleted from the platform.