Chinese hackers targeted Uighurs living in the U.S., Facebook security team discovered

Chinese hackers targeted Uighurs living in the U.S., Facebook security team discovered

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“They were targeting activists, journalists and dissidents among the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities from Xinjiang, China, who lived mainly in Turkey, Kazakhstan, the United States and other countries,” said Facebook in a post on Wednesday detailing its discoveries about the cyber espionage campaign.

Infected hackers target electronic devices with malware “to enable surveillance”, the Facebook (FB) said. In some cases, hackers have compromised or falsified news sites popular among Uighurs to secretly install spy software.

“This group used fake Facebook accounts to create fictional personas posing as journalists, students, human rights defenders or members of the Uighur community to build the trust of the people they targeted and trick them into clicking malicious links,” said the company.

In January, the United States officially determined that China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uighur Muslims and ethnic and religious minority groups living in northwestern Xinjiang. (The Chinese government denied this statement, calling it a lie.)

The US State Department previously estimated that some 2 million Uighurs, as well as members of other Muslim minority groups, were detained in internment camps in the region.

Facebook did not directly blame the government in Beijing, but said the hackers “had the hallmarks of a persistent and well-resourced operation”. (Hackers linked to the Chinese government previously hacked iPhones and Android devices to target Uighurs.)

The hacker groups identified as responsible for the latest campaign are known in the cybersecurity industry as “Evil Eye” and “Earth Empusa” and have been involved in previous espionage campaigns, according to Facebook.

Facebook’s announcement comes a day before CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears in Congress, alongside the heads of Twitter and Google. Zuckerberg is expected to be asked about the role his platform may have played in fueling the January 6 riot at the United States Capitol, among other issues.

Facebook and other social media platforms have been widely criticized for allowing Russian trolls to pose as Americans online in the run-up to the 2016 elections. Since then, Facebook has publicly called on some governments and other entities it has found using its platform for nefarious purposes.

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