Facebook disrupts Chinese hackers’ operation targeting Uyghurs, journalists

Facebook has taken action against a group of hackers in China who were targeting dissidents, mostly Uyghurs from Xinjiang province, the company’s Cyber Espionage team said on Wednesday.

“Today, we are sharing actions we took against a group of hackers in China known in the security industry as Earth Empusa or Evil Eye – to disrupt their ability to use their infrastructure to abuse our platform, distribute malware and hack people’s accounts across the internet. They targeted activists, journalists and dissidents predominantly among Uyghurs from Xinjiang in China primarily living abroad in Turkey, Kazakhstan, the United States, Syria, Australia, Canada and other countries,” said the company’s head of Cyber Espionage Investigations Mike Dvilyanski and Head of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher.