information operations – Page 15

China borrowing Russian tactics to spread coronavirus disinformation

Posted on March 23, 2020 by Shannon Vavra

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s state-backed information operations have been following Russia’s playbook for spreading disinformation, an expert on the subject told a panel on Monday. The Chinese Communist Party, typically thought to run disinformation operations aimed at controlling the narrative, is mirroring behavior that is historically associated with Russian disinformation — spreading chaos and confusion. In this case, it’s about whether the coronavirus actually originated in China, Laura Rosenberger, the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, said during a disinformation event hosted by the CyberPeace Institute (CPI), a nonprofit founded last year to call out malicious cyber activities. “Russia’s focused on sowing confusion,” Rosenberger said during a panel. “We see China’s propaganda apparatus evolving and taking lessons from Russia in this moment … China was much more focused on narrative creation and control [before].” With Chinese ambassadors and state-backed media as mouthpieces, China has offered multiple possible explanations for where the virus […]

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U.S. drops charges against accused IRA sponsor over concerns Russia would weaponize evidence

Posted on March 17, 2020 by Jeff Stone

U.S. prosecutors said on Monday they would drop criminal charges against two Russian firms accused of funding disinformation efforts ahead to the 2016 election, amid concerns that the companies would weaponize evidence in the trial to boost future operations. The U.S. Department of Justice charged the two companies, Concord Management and Concord Consulting, in 2018 as part of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Both shell firms funded Russian efforts to use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to divide public opinion in the U.S., prosecutors said. With a trial set to begin April 6, though, prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the charges. The abrupt change came after U.S. attorneys complained in prior court filings they would need to provide the defendants with some details about the U.S. government’s sources and methods for its national security investigation. Justice Department officials […]

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Hackers seize on coronavirus fears for fodder in spearphishing, misinformation schemes

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Shannon Vavra

As coronavirus infections surge globally, hackers and nation-state actors are weaponizing information about the COVID-19 virus to spread malware and disinformation, according to security researchers and the State Department. Russian actors, linked with Moscow through “state proxy websites,” for instance, have been using “swarms of online, false personas” to spread misinformation about the new coronavirus online, according to the Global Engagement Center, the State Department section meant to combat information operations around the world. Some of the fake narratives have allegedly been propagated by official state media, Lea Gabrielle, the center’s special envoy and coordinator, told lawmakers Thursday. Threat actors have also begun sending messages laced with malicious software to targets in Italy, where coronavirus infections have surged in recent weeks, according to new research unveiled this week from security firm Sophos. The attackers have been sending messages with a Microsoft Word document that appears to contain recommendations for preventing […]

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Super Tuesday gives feds and states a test run for securing November vote

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Sean Lyngaas

Federal and state officials were up late Tuesday monitoring for threats from hackers and trolls to the biggest primary day of the 2020 election season. A watch floor at the Department of Homeland Security kept election administrators across the country plugged into threat data coming in from the intelligence community. While there were some notable technical glitches in the voting process, nothing malicious came to pass. Bleary-eyed officials can go back to work Wednesday with a sigh of relief but also some lessons learned on how to protect the November presidential vote, which U.S. officials have repeatedly warned will draw foreign interference attempts. “We had well over 100 state and local officials in the room with us exchanging information with us throughout the day,” a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity division said on a 9 p.m. Eastern call with reporters. “[There are] ways that we can improve […]

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Facebook takes down inauthentic accounts from India, Egypt

Posted on March 2, 2020 by Shannon Vavra

Facebook has removed hundreds of accounts, pages, groups and Instagram accounts originating from India and Egypt for violating Facebook’s policy against foreign or government interference. Accounts emanating from India focused on the Gulf region, U.S., UK, and Canada while the Egyptian activity aimed at countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Facebook said one marketing firm in India, “aRep Global,” and two marketing firms in Egypt, “Waves” and “Flexell,” are responsible for the activity. The announcement Monday comes as part of Facebook’s efforts to be more transparent about how it roots out inauthentic behavior on its platforms (this is the first in what executives said will be a series of monthly reports). The social media company in recent months has identified separate campaigns associated with a Russian tycoon, the United Arab Emirates, Africa and the Middle East. But this is not the first time Waves and Flexell, the Egyptian firms, have been caught running questionable campaigns on Facebook. Facebook removed […]

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U.S. must increase defenses against Iranian information operations, report says

Posted on February 12, 2020 by Sean Lyngaas

As social media platforms battle Iranian bots and trolls, the U.S. government needs to step up its own fight against Tehran’s digital influence operations, a new study says. With the 2020 election approaching, Washington should do more to attribute Iranian and other foreign influence operations and warn the public about them, scholars at the Atlantic Council think tank argue. “Iran has invested significant resources and accumulated vast experience in the conduct of digital influence efforts,” the report says. It calls on the Department of Homeland Security to create an intergovernmental agency to alert U.S. officials and the public of foreign influence operations. U.S. intelligence agencies need to work closely with social media companies to pinpoint foreign influence operations, the Atlantic Council scholars Emerson Brooking and Suzanne Kianpour’s advise. That collaboration is a work in progress. While the Russian government’s use of digital influence operations received the most attention from Western […]

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

Posted on February 12, 2020 by Jeff Stone

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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Americans still vulnerable to hack-and-leak tactics, DOJ official says

Posted on January 17, 2020 by Sean Lyngaas

As the 2020 election campaigning kicks into high gear, a senior Department of Justice official says he worries that Americans are still vulnerable to foreign hack-and-leak operations that are intended to disrupt democratic processes. “One of the things that I am concerned about is the hacking-and-dumping activity that occurred in 2016,” John Demers, the assistant attorney general for national security, said Friday. He was referring to Russian military officers’ hacking of email servers used by Democratic political organizations, and the selective leaking of those emails to the public. Despite a lot of progress on election security since Russian interference in 2016, the personal email accounts used by political campaigns are still a weak link, Demers said at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. “It really is dependent on their cyber hygiene practices…and not clicking on that wrong email,” Demers said. “What the Russians did in 2016 in terms of the […]

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Kuwait’s state news agency says hackers breached its Twitter

Posted on January 8, 2020 by Jeff Stone

U.S. military forces are not pulling out of Kuwait. The Kuwaiti government clarified that fact on Wednesday after KUNA, the state news agency, reported that a defense minister said Americans planned an “imminent withdrawal” within three days. In fact, KUNA had been hacked, and word of the withdrawal had been posted by an outsider, according to Tareq al-Muzraem, head of Kuwait’s government communication office. KUNA deleted the original claim from its Twitter page, and posted a series of updates on its website and to its more than 34,000 followers on Twitter. Reuters, a global news and wire service, was one credible news outlet to publish a brief article based on the false KUNA report. (KUNA) categorically denies reports it broadcast statements by Defense Minister Sheikh Ahmad Al-Mansour about withdrawal of US forces from Kuwait.#kuna #kuwaitS.A — kuna (@kuna_en) January 8, 2020 While KUNA provided no details about how the breach […]

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