The National Security Agency denied a report that it is impersonating Facebook's servers in an effort to deliver surveillance malware, saying the article is "inaccurate."
The denial is a response to a Wednesday report from The Intercept, a site co-founded by journalist Glenn Greenwald, that said the NSA "masqueraded as a fake Facebook server" to infect targets' computers with malware. The Intercept cited documents previously provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The NSA tweeted a link to its denial late Thursday.
The agency said it was not "impersonating U.S. social media" or other "U.S. company websites."
The NSA's denial went more broadly than The Intercept's report, saying the agency does not "target any user of global Internet services without appropriate legal authority. Reports of indiscriminate computer exploitation operations are simply false."
The Intercept's report had prompted an impassioned response from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said via Facebook post that he called President Barack Obama “to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future."
Meanwhile Snowden appeared via videoconference at the South by Southwest festival on Monday, in which he accused the NSA and its counterparts of "setting fire to the future of the Internet" -- and he called on the tech community members in the audience to be "the firefighters."