Collaborate Disseminate
The DHS rollout of the Disinformation Governance Board has been criticized for being too vague about the details of what the board will do.
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The Biden administration on Thursday sanctioned Russian oligarchs and organizations for their role in spreading disinformation and supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, among them a news agency the Treasury Department says has ties to a Russian cyber-espionage and offensive unit. The sanctions targeted nine employees of InfoRos, a nominal news agency primarily run by the GRU, which controls the Russian military intelligence service and operates its own special forces units. According to the Treasury Department, the GRU’s 72nd Main Intelligence Information Center, a unit within Russia’s Information Operations Troops, functions as Russia’s “military force for conducting cyber espionage, influence, and offensive cyber operations” and is InfoRos’ operator. In a news release, the Treasury Department said InfoRos is a network of more than 1,000 websites which “spread false conspiracy narratives and disinformation promoted by GRU officials.” For example, in early December, 2021, Treasury officials said one Ukraine-based InfoRos […]
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In recent days, social media companies have gotten more active in stemming the flow of official Russian propaganda, as well tackling sneakier efforts to spread disinformation about Ukraine. The steps follow pressure from policymakers in the U.S. and elsewhere for social media companies to counter narratives from Russia as it conducts its military offense. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said Monday that it had removed about 40 accounts based out of Russia and Ukraine posing as legitimate news sources, which were pushing the narrative that the West had betrayed Ukraine and that Ukraine was a failed state. It also said it had taken steps to counter hacking threats to Facebook members from Ghostwriter, a suspected Russia- and Belarus-linked disinformation and hacking operation. Also Monday, Twitter said it would add labels to accounts sharing links to Russian state-affiliated media outlets, and was “taking steps to significantly reduce the […]
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In recent days, social media companies have gotten more active in stemming the flow of official Russian propaganda, as well tackling sneakier efforts to spread disinformation about Ukraine. The steps follow pressure from policymakers in the U.S. and elsewhere for social media companies to counter narratives from Russia as it conducts its military offense. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said Monday that it had removed about 40 accounts based out of Russia and Ukraine posing as legitimate news sources, which were pushing the narrative that the West had betrayed Ukraine and that Ukraine was a failed state. It also said it had taken steps to counter hacking threats to Facebook members from Ghostwriter, a suspected Russia- and Belarus-linked disinformation and hacking operation. Also Monday, Twitter said it would add labels to accounts sharing links to Russian state-affiliated media outlets, and was “taking steps to significantly reduce the […]
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The U.S. Department of Justice is closing down its controversial “China Initiative,” instead launching a broader strategy toward countering multiple threats from several countries, a senior department official said Wednesday. The new “Strategy for Countering Nation-State Threats” will focus the department’s resources on multiple concurrent threats from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, such as transnational repression, foreign malign influence and cyberthreats, said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen in remarks at George Mason University. “We see nations such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea becoming more aggressive and more capable in their activity than ever before,” Olsen said, adding that the new strategy “is threat driven,” and an attempt to counter malign activity from multiple countries, not just China. The China Initiative — launched during the Trump administration to group espionage, intellectual property theft and cybecrime cases involving Chinese suspects under one effort — was criticized for alleged racial […]
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The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday sanctioned four current and former Ukrainian government officials for allegedly supporting Russian influence operations to destabilize Ukraine, including one who gathered information on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, a frequent target of Kremlin cyberattacks. Taras Kozak and Oleh Voloshyn — two active members of parliament — acted at the behest of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Treasury said, as did former Ukrainian officials Vladimir Sivkovich and Volodymyr Oliynyk. “In 2021, Oliynyk worked at the direction of the FSB to gather information about Ukrainian critical infrastructure,” the department explained. “As in previous Russian incursions into Ukraine, repeated cyber operations against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure are part of Russia’s hybrid tactics to threaten Ukraine.” Ukrainian officials are already in the midst of blaming Russia for cyberattacks last week on its government agencies. While Treasury delivered the sanctions one day after President Joe Biden predicted Russia would invade Ukraine, […]
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The Belarusian government is partially responsible for a years-long influence operation targeting Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, according to research published Tuesday. Operation “Ghostwriter,” a propaganda campaign that has pushed fabricated narratives about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and COVID-19, among other topics, is the work of people in Belarus, including the country’s military, as part of an overall effort to hack and leak information, pollute political discourse with amplified narratives, and collect intelligence, according to the threat intelligence firm Mandiant, which has tracked the group for years. Investigators, including from the European Union, previously suggested that the operation aligned with Russian interests, as the social media campaigns apparently sought to sow mistrust in NATO’s military presence in Eastern Europe, a frequent goal of the Kremlin. The findings show that complex information operations once associated with Russia and China have become more common, Ben Read, director of Mandiant’s cyber espionage team, told […]
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The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s former lead election security official is recommending comprehensive changes to protect the ballot in future elections, from physical safety upgrades for election workers and federal agency revamps to mandated disclosure of cyber incidents. A report published Thursday from former CISA election adviser Matt Masterson, who now works for Stanford’s Internet Observatory Cyber Policy Center, is a response to the complications that surrounded the 2020 elections. Namely, 2020 was marred by misinformation that undermined public faith in elections, inconsistent funding to mitigate IT vulnerabilities and threats against election officials, the report concludes. The battle over the 2020 presidential race rages on, with the GOP pushing partisan election reviews in several states despite numerous recounts that concluded with Joe Biden as the victor. “Our democracy is in trouble,” Masterson told CyberScoop. “We are in a downward spiral of distrust of the process. If we don’t make […]
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The European Union formally blamed Russia on Friday, just ahead of this weekend’s German elections, for a hacking campaign targeting EU government officials and politicians. And the EU is threatening to take unspecified action. “The European Union will revert to this issue in upcoming meetings and consider taking further steps,” reads a statement from the high representative of the EU. Known as Ghostwriter, the campaign drawing the EU’s ire has previously taken aim at NATO and launched disinformation efforts as well, according to researchers who have tied its goals to Russian interests but not attributed it to the government. “The European Union and its Member States strongly denounce these malicious cyber activities, which all involved must put to an end immediately,” the EU statement reads. “We urge the Russian Federation to adhere to the norms of responsible state behaviour in cyberspace.” The EU says that Ghostwriter targets in its member […]
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Last week Facebook said it removed dozens of inauthentic accounts and pages that sought to boost the reelection campaign of Julián Zacarías, the current mayor of the Mexican city of Progreso, and denigrate his opponent, Lila Frías Castillo. The campaign managed several pages and accounts that appeared to be independent local news organizations, when, in fact, they were linked with Sombrero Blanco, a public relations firm in Mexico, and Zacarías himself, according to Facebook’s investigation. The company ultimately conducted a takedown of 44 Facebook accounts, 11 Pages and one Instagram account, adding that the operation had minimal reach. Government-sponsored disinformation campaign operators have long sought to hide their true identities by recruiting writers to publish articles for seemingly legitimate news organizations, or using manipulated photos to lend an air of authenticity to their fake accounts. The National Security Agency and Cyber Command confirmed that the Internet Research Agency, a Russian […]
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