Facebook Sued Hong Kong Firm for Hacking Users and Ad Fraud Scheme

Dec 6, 2019

Following its efforts to take legal action against those
misusing its social media platform, Facebook has now filed a new
lawsuit against a Hong Kong-based advertising company and two
Chinese individuals for allegedly abusing its ad platform to
distribute malware and Ad fraud.

Facebook filed the lawsuit on Thursday in the Northern District
of California against ILikeAd Media International Company Ltd. as
well as a Chinese software developer and a marketing director
working for the firm, Chen Xiao Cong and Huang Tao.

All three defendants have been alleged to have deceived people
into installing malware on their systems, enabling them to
compromise user’s Facebook accounts and then using those hacked
accounts to advertise counterfeit goods and diet pills—which is
clearly in violation of Facebook’s Terms and Advertising
Policies.

“The suit seeks to hold accountable ILikeAd Media International
Company Ltd. and Chen Xiao Cong and Huang Tao for creating the
malware, tricking people into installing it, compromising people’s
Facebook accounts and then using people’s accounts to run deceptive
ads,” Facebook said in a blog
post ^[1] today when announcing
the lawsuit.

According to the social media giant, the defendants made use of
improper practices such as “celeb bait” and “cloaking” to bait
Facebook users into downloading and installing malware that
eventually compromised their Facebook accounts.

While ‘cloaking’ involves deliberately disguising the true
destination of a link in the ad by displaying one version of the
ad’s landing page to Facebook and another version to Facebook
users, ‘celeb bait’ involves misusing celebrities photos in ads to
entice users to click on them.

“Cloaking schemes are often sophisticated and well organized,
making the individuals and organizations behind them difficult to
identify and hold accountable. As a result, there have not been
many legal actions of this kind,” Facebook said.

Since April, Facebook has notified hundreds of thousands of users
that their accounts may have been compromised and instructing them
to change their passwords, according to the complaint.

Facebook also said the social media company had issued more than
$4 million in refunds to victims whose Facebook accounts were used
to run unauthorized ads and also helped to secure their accounts
compromised in this malicious advertisement scheme.

This is the latest lawsuit that Facebook filed in a federal court
against entities and individuals abusing its properties for
malicious intent.

Just over a month ago, Facebook sued surveillance
vendor NSO Group ^[2]
for allegedly hacking 1,400 mobile devices by misusing the
company’s secure messaging platform, WhatsApp.

In August this year, Facebook also filed a lawsuit against two
shady Android app developers ^[3], Hong Kong-based
‘LionMobi’ and Singapore-based ‘JediMobi,’ for allegedly running a
“click injection fraud” scheme that programmed bots to click on
Facebook ads.

In March this year, Facebook also took two Ukrainian men into
the courts for allegedly using quiz apps on the platform to
distribute malware that steals Facebook users’ data.

References

^{^}
blog post
(about.fb.com)
^{^}
sued surveillance vendor NSO Group
(thehackernews.com)
^{^}
lawsuit against two shady Android app
developers (thehackernews.com)

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Facebook Sued Hong Kong Firm for Hacking Users and Ad Fraud Scheme

References

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