The probe is based on complaints from a lawmaker and an unnamed senior civil servant.
rench prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into X over allegations that the company owned by billionaire Elon Musk manipulated its algorithms for the purposes of “foreign interference.”

Magistrate Laure Beccuau said in a statement Friday that prosecutors had launched the probe on Wednesday and were looking into whether the social media giant broke French law by altering its algorithms and fraudulently extracting data from users.

The criminal investigation comes on the heels of an inquiry launched in January, and is based on complaints from a lawmaker and an unnamed senior civil servant, Beccuau said.
A complaint that sparked the initial January inquiry accused X of spreading “an enormous amount of hateful, racist, anti-LGBT+ and homophobic political content, which aims to skew the democratic debate in France.”

POLITICO has reached out to X for comment.

The investigation lands as X is increasingly under fire from regulators in Paris and Brussels.

Two French parliamentarians referred the platform to France’s digital regulator Arcom on Thursday following anti-Semitic and racist posts by Grok, the artificial-intelligence chatbot that answers questions from X users.

The European Commission has separately been investigating the Musk-owned platform for almost two years now, on suspicion of breaching its landmark platforms regulation, the Digital Services Act.

Discover how the ClickFix social engineering attack exploits human psychology to bypass security. Learn how hackers use this tactic and how to protect against it.

The money transfer giant said hackers also stole some customer Social Security numbers during the September cyberattack.

Russia is increasingly turning to American social media stars to covertly influence voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to U.S. officials and recently unveiled criminal charges.
“What we see them doing is relying on witting and unwitting Americans to seed, promote and add credibility to narratives that serve these foreign actors’ interest,” a senior intelligence official said in a briefing on Friday. “These foreign countries typically calculate that Americans are more likely to believe other Americans’ views.”

We uncovered a malvertising campaign where the threat actor hijacks social media pages, renames them to mimic popular AI photo editors, then posts malicious links to fake websites.

A senior official previously condemned the platform for ‘censoring’ Hamas-related content.

Not only is TikTok’s algorithm promoting Neo-Nazi content, extremist organizations are also using the platform to recruit new members and encourage real-world action.
#content #extremism #media #moderation #nazis #social #tiktok

Meta has removed 63,000 Instagram accounts from Nigeria that were involved in sextortion scams, including a coordinated network of 2,500 accounts linked to 20 individuals targeting primarily adult men in the United States.
#Computer #Facebook #InfoSec #Instagram #Media #Meta #Scam #Security #Sextortion #Social

Hackers are increasingly targeting verified accounts on X (formerly Twitter) belonging to government and business profiles and marked with 'gold' and 'grey' checkmarks to promote cryptocurrency scams, phishing sites, and sites with crypto drainers.

In recent years, cybercriminals have become increasingly professional — fraudsters have consistently been improving their skills, making less crucial mistakes, and creating various “as-a-service” businesses to help lower-skilled threat actors launch scams and attacks, allowing the latter to run full cybercrime operations.

There are different types of cybercrime services that exist today, including malware-as-a-service, where cybercriminals develop and sell malware services to other malicious actors; the service also includes creating and spreading malware types such as ransomware on compromised hosts. Meanwhile, other services require the use of multiple social media accounts to be successfully carried out, such as misinformation, spamming, and malware propagation. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for cybercriminals to send thousands of spam messages using thousands of accounts on social media platforms. But how do they manage to automate all of it?

Security researchers have identified that a widespread LinkedIn hacking campaign has seen many users locked out of their accounts worldwide.

It is not common for analysts to have the opportunity to study the social circles of criminal organizations, but occasionally a group emerges that is more transparent than others. Examining a criminal organization’s social presence can give analysts valuable insights into the structure and operations of the organization, as well as the relationships and connections between its members and the community around them.

Specializzati soprattutto in social engineering, i ragazzini di oggi continuano, come un tempo, a essere protagonisti di gravi incidenti informatici. Come è possibile?