NewsDio Desk : Chinese hackers are spying on the accounts of Uyghur activists and journalists who inhabit the regions of United States. The startling news comes in the wake of an investigation carried out by security staff.
Uyghurs who are basically Muslim minorities from regions such as Xinjiang in China and are living in various countries such as Kazakhstan, the United States etc are being targeted by hackers.
The hackers in order to create an understanding and win the trust of the users create fake profiles while posing themselves as students, journalists or human rights advocates or even Uyghur community members.
This they do with the pure intention of persuading them to click on the malicious links and to take out confidential data which they possibly can.
Yes, their main task is to infect the target users with malware so that they can control their devices.
This has been the finding through a research which comes from FireEye. It is basically a cyber security company which has created such startling revelations.
United States has official issued a statement in the month of January where it has expressed serious concerns about China which is committing genocide on Uyghur Muslims including other religious minority groups. They are basically concentrated in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
However, the claims of United States have been flatly denied by Chinese government calling it fabricated and a pure lie. The US State Department has projected that at least 2 million Uyghurs have been living a life worse than that of a prisoner in various internment camps across the region.
Although, Facebook didn’t out rightly claimed that the government of Beijing is behind the hacking related activities. However, it did say that the hackers constitute the operations after a well research and thought out operation.
There has also been a history of hackers trying to hack iPhones as well as Android devices with an aim to target Uyghurs. Yes, they were previously held close proximity to Chinese Government.
The hacking groups are usually referred as “Evil Eye” in the world of cyber security. These are the well knit operations which have basically been part of various spy campaigns.
The startling revelation by Facebook comes very close (Just a day before) to CEO Mark Zuckerberg who is going to appear before Congress. He will appear before the panel of dignitaries who are going to pertinent questions regarding the violence occurred on January 6th at the US capital. He will obviously represent Facebook and the role the platform has played when it came to the riots.
It is to be noted that various social media platforms including Facebook have drawn lots of flak and criticism for giving consent to Russian trolls as posing American online during run up to 2016 elections.
It created a sense of discomfort in the eyes of people who were then skeptical about the functioning of Facebook as it has been heavily looked down by people in terms not being very clean when it comes to carrying out its duties.