And the NSA is pretending to be Facebook to get the job done.
"In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using the social-media site as a launching pad to infect a target's computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive," First Look reported on Glenn Greenwald's Intercept channel, citing a classified slide presentation from 2009. "In others, it has sent out spam emails laced with the malware, which can be tailored to covertly record audio from a computer's microphone and take snapshots with its webcam. The hacking systems have also enabled the NSA to launch cyberattacks by corrupting and disrupting file downloads or denying access to websites."
As part of the "industrial-scale exploitation," the agency is leveraging Facebook's global appeal to trick targets into logging in to a doppelganger version of the site, a technique dubbed "Quantumhand." "If this report is accurate, the NSA is acting like a spambot," said Harley Geiger, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology. "The use of malware implants should be targeted against specific threats in tightly controlled situations, but this kind of mass automated surveillance would put countless Internet users at risk."
First Look's report details how the NSA was able to trick target computers by transmitting "malicious data packets" that disguise it as the real Facebook, a process illustrated in this top-secret animation:
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