Facebook snooped on users' Snapchat traffic in secret project, documents reveal | TechCrunch
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A secret program called "Project Ghostbusters" saw Facebook devise a way to intercept and decrypt the encrypted network traffic of Snapchat users to study their behavior.

Meta tried to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors, including Snapchat and later Amazon and YouTube, by analyzing the network traffic of how its users were interacting with Meta’s competitors. Given these apps’ use of encryption, Facebook needed to develop special technology to get around it.

Facebook’s engineers solution was to use Onavo, a VPN-like service that Facebook acquired in 2013. In 2019, Facebook shut down Onavo after a TechCrunch investigation revealed that Facebook had been secretly paying teenagers to use Onavo so the company could access all of their web activity.

After Zuckerberg’s email, the Onavo team took on the project and a month later proposed a solution: so-called kits that can be installed on iOS and Android that intercept traffic for specific subdomains, “allowing us to read what would otherwise be encrypted traffic so we can measure in-app usage,” read an email from July 2016. “This is a ‘man-in-the-middle’ approach.”

A man-in-the-middle attack — nowadays also called adversary-in-the-middle — is an attack where hackers intercept internet traffic flowing from one device to another over a network. When the network traffic is unencrypted, this type of attack allows the hackers to read the data inside, such as usernames, passwords, and other in-app activity.

  • Promethiel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    3 months ago

    Then it just looks like you’re trying to give a competitive edge to US evil social media.

    This is not just probable but certain; the whole thing is a very long way of saying this. In a world where the US worked for its citizens, this is a national security no-brainer. But we don’t live in a world where the spirit of things is followed when you can enrich yourself skirting the letter. Shit sucks, but this not a secret conspiracy; it’s realpolitik.

    and preventing youth from learning about the situation in Palestine.

    This one is more subjective…and also still probable for the same fucking reasons and good luck sharing the fact that you can act in a so called ‘security’ driven purpose and this is the perfect time to do sneaky shit. As if all of History wasn’t rife with examples with the Patriot Act being the first USA centric coming to mind amongst fuck what, hundreds?

    That is also realpolitik, and all the players know it. Shit sucks.