Stealing police emails, hackers tricking Apple and Facebook user data
Both are reputable technology companies, but according to a new report by Bloomberg, both Apple and Meta (Facebook’s parent company) were tricked by hackers into giving them user data. This happened in mid-2021, when the hackers posed as government employees and asked the two companies to give them user data, including IP addresses, phone numbers and even home addresses. .
Usually, law enforcement forces often ask social networking platforms to assist in criminal investigations, by providing user data, such as the owner of an account. While these requests are usually accompanied by a subpoena or judge’s search order, they are not for urgent requests – often in life-threatening situations.
According to security firm Krebs, this makes fake urgent data query requests more and more common. Usually, a hacker must first gain access to a police department’s email system. They will then generate urgent query requests, describing a critical situation that makes it impossible to properly query data, to require companies to provide them with information immediately.
According to Krebs, this proliferation of activity is leading some hackers to sell access to police email systems, mainly for sending fake data queries to social networking platforms.
As reported by Bloomberg, a string of attacks last year was carried out by a hacker group called the Recursion Team. Although this group is now disbanded, many of its members have joined Lapsus$, a hacker group that has emerged recently because of a series of attacks that stole data from many major technology companies, including Samsung, Nvidia. and Microsoft.
In his statement, Meta policy director Andy Stone said:We always consider the full legal elements of every data query and use advanced processes to validate queries from law enforcement and detect abuse. We block query requests from compromised accounts and work with law enforcement to respond to incidents involving suspected fraud, as we did in this case. this.”
In a statement sent to The Verge, Apple said its policy towards law enforcement: “If the government or law enforcement agencies seeking customer data meet the Government Emergency and Law Enforcement Requests of Information, the follower for government representatives and Law enforcement will be contacted to confirm with Apple that this urgent query is valid.“
Meta and Apple are not the only companies affected by these fake data queries. Bloomberg reports that the hacker has also contacted Snap with similar requests, but it is unclear whether the company will respond.
Check out The Verge
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