Meta rolls out privacy & security measures to help people in Ukraine & Russia protect their accounts
"Updates on our security work in Ukraine," 27 February 2022
... We uncovered a relatively small network of about 40 accounts, Pages and Groups on Facebook and Instagram. They were operated from Russia and Ukraine and targeted people in Ukraine across multiple social media platforms and through their own websites. We took down this operation, blocked their domains from being shared on our platform, and shared information with other tech platforms, researchers and governments... These fictitious personas used profile pictures likely generated using artificial intelligence techniques like generative adversarial networks (GAN). They claimed to be based in Kyiv and posed as news editors, a former aviation engineer, and an author of a scientific publication on hydrography.
... We detected attempts to target people on Facebook to post YouTube videos portraying Ukrainian troops as weak and surrendering to Russia, including one video claiming to show Ukrainian soldiers coming out of a forest while flying a white flag of surrender. We’ve taken steps to secure accounts that we believe were targeted by this threat actor and, when we can, to alert the users that they had been targeted. We also blocked phishing domains these hackers used to try to trick people in Ukraine into compromising their online accounts.
... Earlier this week, we rolled out additional privacy and security protections in Ukraine. We’re now adding them in Russia as well, in response to public reports of targeting of civil society and protesters.