Security News > 2021 > June > Facebook sues hackers who hijacked advertising agencies' accounts
Facebook has filed lawsuits against two groups of suspects who took over advertising agency employees' accounts and abused its ad platform to run unauthorized or deceptive ads.
The social network says that four Vietnamese nationals took over the Facebook accounts of multiple employees working at marketing and advertising agencies using a technique known as session theft.
The app prompted the targets to enter their credentials and other sensitive information, later used by the suspects to take over their accounts and run over $36 million worth of Facebook ads without authorization.
Facebook refunded and helped the victims secure their accounts and is seeking to hold the attackers "Accountable for creating the app, tricking people into installing it, compromising people's Facebook accounts and then using those accounts to run deceptive ads."
In 2019, Facebook sued one entity and two individuals for tricking its users into installing malware via Facebook ads.
Notably, in March 2020, Facebook sued domain name registrar Namecheap and its Whoisguard proxy service "For registering domain names that aim to deceive people by pretending to be affiliated with Facebook apps," frequently being used "For phishing, fraud and scams."