US Marines will pay anybody for a tool to identify cloned or fake social media accounts

Facial recognition and data scrapping tools are one of today’s most cherished technological developments, logical security specialists say. Proof of this is a recent request for a quote from the US Marine Corps, which has expressed a desire to obtain a commercial tool to identify social media accounts that may pose threats to staff and the Marine Corps Enterprise Network.

The document, published on August 20, mentions that the Marines’ goal is to identify cloned social media accounts in which threat actors pose as administrative personnel or military officials in order to send malicious links to Marine Corps members and extract confidential information.

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SOURCE: C4ISRNET

The Deputy Commander of the Cybersecurity Branch Service says Marines need an automated tool to complement their data tracking, detection, and collection activities on social networking sites, significantly reducing the computer security risks of their corporate networks and individual members.

In addition to the detection of potentially malicious profiles, logical security specialists mention that the Marine Corps also intends for this tool to be used as a sophisticated malware threat detector.

In the request for quotation, the organization mentions that it plans to purchase a minimum of a maximum of 10 and a minimum of a license of the desired tool. Specifications required by the Marine Corps include:

  • The ability to extract information from major social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, among others)
  • Detection of use of messaging apps (WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger)
  • Searching for information on all kinds of websites

Specialists in logical security mention that the military organization also intends that this tool can access Chinese platforms such as Sina Weibo, WeChat, TikTok, among others. It should be remembered that multiple Chinese tech companies face a U.S. blockade due to the conflict between President Donald Trump and China’s central government.