Category Archives: Digital Forensic Research Lab

How recent disinformation campaigns tied to Russia, Pakistan blended fake engagement with real life

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Influence operations aren’t just about spreading fake news. International governments and corporate public relations firms also are using inauthentic social media behavior to boost attention around real-world events that fit into foreign policy goals, a panel of experts said Tuesday at CyberTalks, a summit presented by CyberScoop. The propaganda campaigns are increasingly layered, with a number of examples that have relied on contract workers who may not have realized they were involved in an astroturfing effort. In May, Facebook removed 30 pages, six groups, 83 accounts and 49 Instagram profiles that were linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch who had distributed food baskets to impoverished communities in Sudan. The amplification of pro-Russia content appeared to be designed to improve the populations’ impression of Prigozhin, and thus the Kremlin, at a time when Russia is trying to keep Russian warships stationed at Port Sudan on the Red Sea, according to […]

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The worst part about finding Facebook disinformation is finding it again

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When Facebook said in August it had removed a network of fake accounts that had been trying to amplify criticism of President Donald Trump, it gave some external researchers a sense of déjà vu. After all, Facebook had taken intermittent action against accounts, pages and groups that were misrepresenting themselves to promote China’s Communist Party, including specific removals of a campaign known as Spamouflage Dragon. The Spamouflage campaign apparently began in the summer of 2019 as a scheme to denounce pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, eventually shifting to demonize critics of Beijing and to praise China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. By August 2020, Facebook, like Twitter and YouTube, was still removing Spamouflage-affiliated accounts that bashed Trump’s inaction on the coronavirus and U.S. scrutiny of TikTok under its “coordinated inauthentic behavior” policy. Other networks of accounts also have managed to return to Facebook after they were detected and previously removed, […]

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Why social media disinformation represents such a security threat

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Disinformation works on you, too. Coordinated social media campaigns aimed at influencing public opinion, both in the U.S. and abroad, represent such a threat to democratic discourse because propagandists seize on emotional conversations with little accountability. By using Facebook and Twitter to plant misinformation, attackers implicitly nudge readers into the kind of tunnel vision that accelerates a cycle of mistrust, according to two researchers who have spent years examining the issue. Graham Brookie, the director and managing editor of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and Nina Jankowicz, author of “How to Lose the Information War,” said during a panel Tuesday that stopping disinformation requires the kind of cooperation that increasingly is difficult to find in American society. “The tricky thing about disinformation is that everybody thinks of it as somebody else’s problem, right?” Brookie said Tuesday during CyberTalks, a virtual summit hosted by CyberScoop. “We’re all looking at social […]

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2020 is misinformation’s tipping point

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Millions of Americans who already struggle to keep pace with the daily barrage of news are now becoming accustomed to another challenge that’s only becoming more complicated: weaponized misinformation. Misinformation, which has existed for centuries, has emerged as a major theme of the current moment, though, as conspiracy theories, propaganda and disinformation, or the intentional spread of deceptive material, thrive on social media. Now, as Americans contend with fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and growing suspicion in societal institutions, false and fabricated narratives have become attached to essentially every major news story. It’s part of the new reality, complicated by the fact that users on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere re-post sensational material, believing they’re acting in good faith. “A lot of people seem to be sincere believers in the content they’re spreading, even if it’s not real,” said Kate Starbird, an associate professor at the University of Washington focused on […]

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Suspected Russian operatives tried using forged diplomatic documents, social media to create divisions

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A Russian information operation relied on forged diplomatic emails and planted articles on a number of social media sites in an attempt to undermine multiple governments and impersonate U.S. lawmakers, according to a new analysis of recent social media activity. Massachusetts-based Recorded Future on Wednesday published findings detailing how Russian-language operatives spent months using popular internet services to try to interfere in Estonia, the Republic of Georgia and the U.S. The effort appears to be a continuation of a prior Russian campaign, dubbed Operation Secondary Infektion, that utilized Facebook and dozens of online platforms to sow division in the West and discredit political efforts. The ongoing covert influence effort revealed Wednesday, known as Operation Pinball, involved activity on discussion sites like Reddit, LiveJournal, an array of self-publishing sites, falsified social media profiles that prioritized strong operational security over reaching a large audience. In one instance, Recorded Future detected a Reddit […]

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The latest in Facebook’s dragnet: Propaganda from Russian military intelligence

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Facebook on Wednesday announced the removal of three networks of accounts it had determined were operating on behalf of foreign governments, including a number of pages that the company tied to Russian intelligence services. Researchers found a network of 78 accounts, 11 Pages, 29 groups and four Instagram pages that often posted about news such as Russia’s involvement in Syria and the downing of the Malaysian airliner MH17 and also had links to Russian military intelligence services, the company said. Sometimes, the account holders misrepresented themselves as citizen journalists, and contacted policymakers, reporters and other known figures in the region who could help amplify their content, Facebook said in a blog post. The other networks originated in Iran, where operators also impersonated journalists, and Vietnam and Myanmar, where the Burmese telecommunications company MyTel, which is indirectly owned by the Burmese and Vietnamese militaries, engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” These takedowns are […]

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