Category Archives: information operations

Thriving ‘disinformation-as-a-service’ market could make smearing corporate rivals easy

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While disinformation campaigns are often associated with governments, new research indicates there is a robust, easy-to-navigate market for anyone looking to buy their own propaganda arms. It is “alarmingly simple and inexpensive” to launch a sophisticated disinformation campaign, analysts from threat-intelligence company Recorded Future concluded after studying the issue. “Disinformation services are highly customizable in scope, costing anywhere from several hundreds of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more depending on the client’s needs.” The analysts set up their own fake company and commissioned disinformation projects from two different “threat actors” active on Russian-language forums. One of the hired hands generated positive press for the fake company, while the other pushed out smears. A network of inauthentic social media accounts posted articles about the fake company that gained traction on news sites. Like any effective disinformation campaign, the social media interactions included a mix of bots, trolls and […]

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Research outs poorly constructed disinfo campaign aimed at Hong Kong protests

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Hackers that appear to be acting in the interest of China’s government have been hijacking and using fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to push narratives denigrating the Hong Kong protests, according to research from Graphika. Named “Spamouflage Dragon,” the people behind the campaign attempted to avoid detection algorithms by posting a small amount of political content interspersed with higher volumes of spam, such as cats, TikTok videos, pictures of landscapes, or sports. Twitter and Facebook accounts in the spam network have also been interspersing political posting with inspirational quotes, food, and travel. The sweeping, cross-platform campaign, which Graphika assesses is still active and which tends to focus on promoting YouTube videos, appears to have been in operation for years, although it largely went silent in 2017. In June as the Hong Kong protests against China’s controversial extradition law gained traction, the spam network started up again, with accounts, […]

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Air Force unveils information warfare outfit amid U.S. effort to go on offense in cyberspace

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After months of planning, the U.S. Air Force announced it is creating a new information warfare body, an official step that aims to bolster the military’s digital warfare capabilities. The Air Force announced this week it will create an information warfare command, which will combine the capabilities from the division now responsible for defending crucial networks, Air Forces Cyber, and the 25th Air Force, which oversees intelligence collection, surveillance, and reconnaissance. The new outfit will be known as the 16th Air Force, and led by Maj. Gen. Timothy Haugh, who formerly led the Cyber National Mission Force at Cyber Command, pending his confirmation. The update is one aspect in a series of efforts the Pentagon is undertaking to accelerate offensive operations after years of focusing primarily on defense. It also comes at a time when every other U.S. military service — the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard – also is considering upgrades to […]

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Sen. Warner says hacking, disinformation are the future of war, and urges the U.S. to keep up

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Cyberwarfare and information operations now are the primary ways in which countries assert themselves on the world stage, Sen. Mark Warner said in a speech Tuesday, pointing to a new geopolitical reality in which traditional military strength may be less urgent. The Virginia Democrat portrayed hacking, social media manipulation, and other digital techniques as affordable options for smaller countries that don’t have the financial resources to invest in modern military hardware like tanks and fighter jets. U.S. leaders need to more urgently recognize this transition, he said, and prioritize processes and technology that stifle future attempts from adversaries to interfere in U.S. elections and markets. Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, for years has urged Congress to authorize more funding for cybersecurity. “I worry at times we may be spending too much time [and] resources on 20th century stuff when increasingly conflict in the 21st century will be cyber, will be misinformation, disinformation,” Warner […]

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Latest Facebook shutdown involves hundreds of accounts misleading users in Ukraine, Iraq

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Facebook announced on Monday its taken hundreds of accounts, pages and groups offline upon determining they were engaged in separate information operations with roots in Iraq and Ukraine. The company caught 244 accounts, 269 pages, 80 groups and seven Instagram pages that were used to mislead legitimate Facebook users about their behavior, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said in a blog post. Facebook has for months publicized its account removals, in which the social media giant scrubs pages deemed to be violating Facebook policy, typically by lying about their true location or account owner. The company’s general term for the offenses is “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Gleicher repeatedly has stressed that Facebook takes these actions based on apparent user behavior, not the content posted. In this case, Facebook removed 168 accounts, 149 pages and 79 groups for activity focused on Ukraine. People involved in this operation used fake identities […]

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As NSA expands election security task force, Director Paul Nakasone talks lessons learned

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A key component of the Pentagon’s effort to defend the 2018 midterm elections from foreign interference was its collaboration with the Department of Justice to disrupt operations from overseas, Gen. Paul Nakasone, director of the National Security Agency, said Thursday. It’s the kind of interagency effort American officials are trying to achieve again before the 2020 presidential election. The NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, a unified combatant command at the Pentagon dedicated to running cyber-operations, worked with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force in 2018 as part of an effort to avoid the kind of Russian meddling that occurred in 2016, Nakasone said. The effort to protect the 2018 midterm elections, collectively known as Synthetic Theology, resulted in disrupting the internet access of Russia’s social media troll farm, the Internet Research Agency. The effort represented the first cyber-operations abroad to protect U.S. elections, and it’s helping inform the intelligence community’s approach to […]

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Russia’s state-funded news outlet RT keeps hyping fringe stories on Clinton, collusion long after 2016

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Russian state media’s approach to the next U.S. presidential election will look a lot like the plan for the last one, if a new analysis of articles from the network RT is any indication. RT is a Kremlin-funded television network with a strong digital presence that broadcasts in English, Russian and a range of other languages. The outlet’s biases have been well documented, with English-language TV broadcasts, YouTube videos and articles on the RT website covering news through an anti-establishment and anti-government lens. Researchers from threat intelligence company Recorded Future analyzed content from RT’s website from Jan. 2017 through July 2019 to find that the Russian news agency continues to revisit the same topics in an apparent attempt to divide public opinion in the United States. The analysis was shared exclusively with CyberScoop prior to its publication Thursday. Phrases including “Hillary Rodham Clinton,” “Russian Hackers,” and “COLLUSION” (in all capital […]

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YouTube disables 210 channels spreading disinformation about Hong Kong

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YouTube has disabled 210 channels working as part of a “coordinated” influence operation against pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, who the Chinese government has sought to portray as terrorists or paid demonstrators. The Google-owned video streaming company on Thursday provided no details about the number of subscribers each channel had, the content of the videos they disseminated, the number of views each video had, nor other information about targeting. In a blog post, Shane Huntley, a member of Google’s threat analysis team, said only that this activity “was consistent with recent observations and actions related to China announced by Facebook and Twitter.” Both social media companies on Monday announced they had removed accounts spreading disinformation on Beijing’s behalf. Twitter cited “reliable evidence” tying the nefarious use of its platform to a state-sponsored effort. Chinese officials have sought to disrupt international media coverage showing that protests in the semi-autonomous territory are mostly peaceful. An estimated […]

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Army Cyber Command is trying to become an information warfare force

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U.S. Army Cyber Command could soon have a new identity. Commander Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty said this week he wants his military outfit, dedicated to electronic warfare and information operations, to be renamed as the “Army Information Warfare Command.” The rechristening would better represent a new military mission, he said, and come at a time when Army cyber personnel increasingly deal with troll farms on social media, disrupt ISIS operations, and work to confuse international adversaries’ understanding of U.S. military units’ location. “The intent is to provide a proposal that will change us from Army Cyber Command to Army Information Warfare Command because we believe that is a more accurate descriptor of what I am being asked to do on a daily basis,” Fogarty said at the AFCEA TechNet conference in Augusta, Georgia this week. But this change, which Fogarty said he intends to push internally at the Department of Defense over the next two months, is more than just a new […]

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