Belarusian hackers compromise Ukrainian servicemen accounts and post surrender videos — Meta

A hacking group linked to the Belarusian government has attempted to compromise accounts of Ukrainian military personnel and published videos calling on the Ukrainian army to surrender, according to a new report of the company Meta, The Verge reported.

According to the Meta report, there has been a surge of attempts to hack the accounts by Ghostwriter, a hacker group funded by the Belarusian government.

Meta also noted Ghostwriter activity in February 2022. After that, the company stated that the group had tried to hack “dozens” more accounts, although it “had only been successful in a handful of cases.” If successful, the hackers had been able to publish fake videos, further sharing of which had been blocked by Meta.

“Since our last public update [dated February 27], this group has attempted to hack into the Facebook accounts of dozens of Ukrainian military personnel. In a handful of cases, they posted videos calling on the Army to surrender as if these posts were coming from the legitimate account owners. We blocked these videos from being shared,” Meta says.

The spreading of false surrender announcements has already been a tactic of hackers who took over television networks in Ukraine and published false messages about Ukraine’s surrender into the chyrons of live broadcast news. Although such statements can be quickly disproved, experts suggest that their purpose is to undermine Ukrainians’ trust in media.

Besides hacking the military personnel, Meta’s latest report describes other threats. Thus, the company tells that a group linked to the Belarusian KGB tried to organize a protest against the Polish government in Warsaw. The event and the account that created it were removed.

“Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, our teams have been on high alert to detect and disrupt threats and platform abuse, including attempts to come back by networks we removed before,” representatives of Meta say.

Read more details about the hackers’ activity of Russia and Belarus against Ukraine full Meta’s Adversarial Threat Report.