Forwarded messages spewing rumours of cyberattacks targeting Jewish people, or stoking fears that Jewish people might be the target of cyberattacks, have no basis in reality, according to Meta's WhatsApp messaging service.
Numerous online platforms have appeared to be spreading the warnings in recent days, with warnings beginning to circulate on Saturday.
Scott Melker, one of the most influential crypto influencers on X, who has over one million followers, posted a warning on the social network asking that people share it with others.
Hackers will use the WhatsApp app to lure WhatsApp users to download a file called "Seismic Waves CARD" the app, which will allow them to hack their phones in less than 10 seconds after installing the app.
A post by Melker has been retweeted 200 times and has been viewed more than 250,00 times as of this writing.
As reported by NBC News, the warning has been posted more than 30 times on X and has also spread to other social media and messaging services, including Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and WhatsApp Messenger.
There have been more than a dozen other posts since then, including one that was posted by a former Twitter user who spread the warning across Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, WHO Communications Manager Emily Westcott stated that similar rumours have circulated before and that the company had previously confirmed that the messages hacked by "seismic waves" had been false.
There have been several hoaxes popping up of late, warning of the download of a “Seismic Waves CARD”, which supposedly relates to the Moroccan earthquakes.
The message copycats elements of a previous hoax warning issued just several weeks ago. A Snopes report in September confirmed that those messages were also false and that WhatsApp had lied about them.
A Similar Hoax Has Been Reported in The Past
In a report published by multiple news outlets, Emily Westcott, a communications manager at WhatsApp, owned by Meta, stated that this type of hoax has been reported in the past.
According to her, similar messages regarding the September earthquake in Morocco had also been falsely reported by the company in a previous statement that was made to fact-checking website Snopes.
Even though spyware has cropped up in the past, this issue is rare to date and the spread of the hoax plays to the fears that victims may have about spyware on their phones.
As per researchers, Israeli cyber-intelligence company NSO Group created spyware in 2019 which was capable of infecting cell phones through the app's voice calling function based on a vulnerability found in WhatsApp's code.
According to WhatsApp's lawsuit against NSO, the spyware was allegedly targeting 1,400 users, including journalists, lawyers, human rights activists, political dissidents, diplomats, and foreign officials in a position to represent a foreign government. It has been reported that NSO's products were at least a minor part of the murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Elon Musk has been criticized heavily for his more relaxed approach to content moderation and the spread of misinformation at X, and as a result, Musk himself has commented on conspiracy theories that are spreading throughout the site.
After Musk posted a message on Sunday urging X users to stay updated on the Israel-Hamas fighting by following accounts known for promoting lies, Musk deleted the post after a few hours.
A number of those accounts have also posted antisemitic content in the past, including a statement that said, "The overwhelming majority of people who work in the media and banks are Zionists," which is antisemitic.
Several videos from previous conflicts have been repackaged and distributed on the Internet in the days following the outbreak of the war, including videos repurposing to show footage from the ground, video game clips claiming to show footage from the ground, and a false press release from the White House claiming the Biden administration had provided $8 billion in emergency aid to Israel.