Cybersecurity
Facebook Says Chinese Hackers Tried to Trick Uyghurs
- Fake accounts were designed to spur clicks on malicious links
- Facebook says fewer than 500 people were targeted by hackers
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Facebook Inc. said Chinese hackers used fake accounts in an effort to trick some of the country’s ethnic Uyghur minority into clicking on malicious links.
The effort, which Facebook described as “highly targeted,” saw a group of hackers create fake personalities on Facebook to build relationships with Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic group in China. The hackers posed as journalists, students and human rights advocates to convince their targets to click on links that sent them to malicious websites, which could then infect their phones.