Facebook files a suit against 2 Ukranian developers for stealing user data

• The two developers named Gleb Sluchevsky and Andrey Gorbachov are employees of Web Sun Group and are based out of Kiev.
• The two developers have developed 4 web apps that provide quizzes on various topics.

What is the issue - Facebook has filed a lawsuit on March 8, 2019, against two Ukranian developers for developing web apps and malicious browser extensions that injects ads into users’ timelines and steals user data.

The two developers named Gleb Sluchevsky and Andrey Gorbachov are employees of Web Sun Group and are based out of Kiev.

Worth noting - The two developers, Sluchevsky and Gorbachov have developed 4 web apps that provide quizzes on various topics.

The 4 web apps include:

• SuperTest
• FQuiz
• Megatest
• Pechenka

These web apps were primarily advertised towards Russian and Ukranian users and attracted users with themes such as ‘Do you have royal blood?’, ‘You are yin. Who is your yang?’, ‘What kind of dog are you according to your zodiac sign?’, and more.

These apps were hosted on several third-party websites such as megatest.online, supertest.name, testsuper.su, testsuper.net, fquiz.com, funnytest.pro and were advertised and shared on Facebook.

Why it matters - Once users click on these adverts on Facebook, they are redirected to a site where they are urged to enable push notification on their browsers.

• This would later prompt users to install various other browser extensions.
• These browser extensions include malicious code that would inject ads into users’ timelines and collect users’ public and non-public data.
• The collected data is then sent to the server operated by the two developers.

Facebook noted that the malicious extensions were installed more than 63,000 times.

“In total, Defendants compromised approximately 63,000 browsers used by Facebook users and caused over $75,000 in damages to Facebook,” Facebook said in its civil complaint, The Daily Beast noted.