Raphael Satter, Elizabeth Culliford

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: Facebook) is calling out half a dozen private surveillance firms for hacking and other abuses. A report was published on Thursday accusing them of targeting approximately 50,000 users across all its platforms.

American lawmakers, President Joe Biden, and other tech companies are supporting the fight against the spy agencies. This is in addition to a broad move against American hackers, American legislators, and American technology companies.

Meta already sues NSO in U.S. Court. Nathaniel Gleicher, Meta’s head of security policy, told Reuters that Thursday’s crackdown was meant to signal that “the surveillance-for-hire industry is much broader than one company.”

Meta reported that it had suspended approximately 1,500 accounts, mostly from fake organizations, across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Meta claimed that the entities were targeting people from more than 100 different countries.

Meta didn’t provide any details about how it discovered the surveillance companies, however it owns some of the largest social and communication networks in the world and boasts regularly that it can find and eliminate malicious actors using its platforms.

One of them is Israel’s Black Cube. It was famous for sending its spy spies to Harvey Weinstein. Meta stated that intelligence firm Meta was using “phantom persons” to communicate with targets online, and get their emails. This is likely in preparation for “later phishing attacks.”

Black Cube released a statement saying it doesn’t engage in any hacking or phishing. The firm also stated that they routinely check “all agents’ activities comply with local laws”.

Meta called out BellTroX as well, an Indian cyber mercenary company exposed by Reuters last year and internet watchdog Citizen Lab, an Israeli company named Bluehawk CI and a European business called Cytrox – all who Meta charged with hacking.

Cognyte is a security company that spun it off. Verint Systems (NASDAQ:) Inc. in February. Israeli firm Cobwebs Technologies was accused of not hacking, but using fake profiles to trick people.

Bluehawk, Verint, Cognyte and Verint did not return any messages assuring their comment.

Meital Levi Tal, a spokesperson for Cobwebs stated in an email that the company draws on open source information and its products are “not intrusive”. Messages left with Ivo Malinovski – who until recently identified himself as Cytrox’s chief executive on LinkedIn – received no immediate response. Since his company was exposed in 2012, Sumit Gupta, founder of BellTroX hasn’t returned messages to Reuters journalists. He has previously denied any wrongdoing.

Gleicher declined to name any targets, but Citizen Lab published a report at the same moment as Meta that said Cytrox had killed Ayman Nour, an Egyptian opposition figure.

Nour blamed Egypt for spying. He told Reuters from Istanbul, that he suspected he was being monitored by Egyptian officials.

He stated, “For my first time, I have evidence.”

Egyptian authorities didn’t immediately reply to my request for comment.

Gleicher stated that celebrities, journalists, lawyers and executives were also targets for spy companies. Gleicher said the spy agencies also took in family members and friends of those targets.

Meta cybersecurity official David Agranovich said he hoped Thursday’s announcement would “kickstart the disruption of the surveillance-for-hire market,” but whether it deals the companies involved more than a temporary setback remains to be seen. Black Cube, and BellTroX are two of the affected companies that have come back from previous spy scandals.

Gleicher stated that spy firm targets would be sent automated warnings. However, he claimed Facebook wouldn’t identify the firms or clients involved. Facebook claimed it identified multiple customers of Cobwebs.

Marta Pardavi is one of the many Hungarian human right defenders who claim that they were attacked by Black Cube in 2017, and 2018. She said that she was happy with Facebook’s reports, but desired more information.

She said, “They call law firms.” She said, “But law companies have clients. These law firms have clients.