Meta's Project Ghostbusters: Secret Interception of Snapchat Traffic

Unsealed federal court documents have exposed Meta’s covert 'Project Ghostbusters,' an internal initiative designed to intercept and decrypt secure network analytics traffic from rival apps like Snapchat, YouTube, and Amazon. Faced with a lack of analytics on competitors due to encryption, Meta engineers developed custom technology deployed via the Onavo VPN app to perform man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks on users' devices. This allowed Meta to read encrypted traffic before it was sent over the network, providing them with granular, unauthorized competitive intelligence. Internal emails reveal high-level executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, explicitly demanded solutions to bypass competitor encryption. This leak highlights a severe breach of digital privacy and wiretapping laws, demonstrating how Big Tech weaponizes acquired utility apps to conduct corporate surveillance on global populations. The fallout threatens to trigger new DOJ antitrust and privacy investigations.