Category Archives: information operations

LinkedIn stopped more than 21 million fake accounts this year, but legitimate users are the real challenge

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All that corporate jargon filling up your LinkedIn feed actually could be one of the social media website’s best defenses against state-sponsored disinformation. The Microsoft-owned professional networking platform on Tuesday announced it’s blocked or removed 21.6 million fake accounts between January and June of this year. Some 19.5 million of those accounts were blocked at the registration stage, meaning they never became active, while employees caught another 2 million and members flagged roughly 67,000 more accounts. LinkedIn largely has been spared from the deluge of propaganda on Twitter and Facebook because so many users act like they do in the workplace, the New York Times reported last week, meaning that when one user starts raving with incoherent grammar, others notice. “We want to make sure our community continues to be a valuable resource for you; one that creates opportunities to find jobs, make connections and grow careers,” Paul Rockwell, LinkedIn’s […]

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Chinese state media bought Twitter ads to spread disinformation about Hong Kong protests

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Twitter was posting advertisements on behalf of Chinese state media that portrayed the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong as “increasingly violent,” according to the social media bookmarking site Pinboard. Ads originating with Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese government’s official media outlet, falsely reported that “All walks of life in Hong Kong called for a brake to be put on the blatant violence and for order to be restored,” according to Pinboard, a platform where ads and social media activity are catalogued and analyzed. Chinese officials are trying to disrupt international media coverage showing that the protests, known as the Umbrella Movement, are mostly peaceful. There have been eruptions of violence, such as when police fired bean bags at demonstrators, injuring one woman’s eye, and when authorities dispersed protesters by beating them with clubs. An estimated 1.7 million people marched Aug. 18 in a peaceful protest calling for reforms such as […]

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Facebook shuts down ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior’ from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE

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In the latest sign that fake accounts remain a popular tool for amplifying political messages on Facebook, the social media company says it has disrupted information campaigns emanating from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The hundreds of disabled accounts, groups and pages were involved in two unrelated operations, one originating in Egypt and the UAE, and the other in Saudi Arabia. The campaigns — which Facebook labeled as “coordinated inauthentic behavior” also included accounts on Instagram, which Facebook owns. Both campaigns used phony pages to post news in support of a political agenda, and both focused on countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Facebook said. The company linked the latter campaign, which supported Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, to the Saudi government. “We’re taking down these pages, groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, wrote […]

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Atlantic Council Discovers Likely Russian Federation Information Operation

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Image source:@DFRLab source of Record: Facebook
via @DFRLab – Digital Forensics Research Lab, writing at the Atlantic Council’s Medium blog, reports the discovery of a Russian Federation (Rossiyskaya Federatsiya) information operation of ‘immense pro… Continue reading Atlantic Council Discovers Likely Russian Federation Information Operation→

Russia’s trolling tactics are getting more elaborate

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Facebook’s early May takedown of a Russian political disinformation operation was much larger than previously thought, according to research published this weekend by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. The Russian-linked actors behind the campaign went well beyond just amplifying political narratives on Facebook, and in fact began much earlier by planting false stories and then later amplifying these fake stories using fake accounts. In one case, these Russian-linked actors impersonated Sen. Marco Rubio’s Twitter account in a tweet that made it look like he was disparaging Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters. Then-Defense Secretary of the UK Gavin Williams was also victim to a similar photoshop effort. One of the false stories that the Russian trolls created and amplified through fake accounts includes a storyline that a Spanish intelligence agency rooted out an anti-Brexit pilot to assassinate Boris Johnson. Johnson is now in the running to serve as the UK’s next prime minister. As many Russian-linked […]

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Twitter scrubs nearly 5,000 accounts tied to state-backed information operations

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Twitter said Thursday it has removed thousands of accounts associated with six state-backed disinformation campaigns from Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Spain. The 4,946 accounts taken off the social media site engaged in malicious activity ranging from the amplification of political propaganda and the impersonation of American politicians, among other terms of service violations, the company said. Twitter has “reliably” linked the accounts with state-affiliated organizations, Yoel Roth, chief of site integrity, said in a blog post. But the takedowns also demonstrate how, even as Silicon Valley invests more resources into uncovering this kind of activity, governments still are exploiting Twitter’s influence. “We only disclose datasets associated with coordinated malicious activity that we are able to reliably associate with state-affiliated actors,” Roth wrote. The goal of sharing these campaigns is to enable researchers to further analyze disinformation so the world can better respond to it, especially as it relates to elections, he […]

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Not quite fake news: Twitter accounts amplify old stories to sow discord

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Researchers are tracking a new kind of social media influence operation apparently meant to inflame Twitter users by re-packaging old news and amplifying divisive content. More than 215 social media accounts have re-posted news about terrorism, racism and other contentious topics from legitimate media outlets, apparently in an attempt to amplify U.S. schisms, according to research published Wednesday by the threat intelligence firm Recorded Future. The news was real but often outdated by years, and links to the international news organizations were cloaked under URL shorteners to make the headlines appear current. The activity dates back to May 2018. The campaign, which Recorded Future calls “Fishwrap,” marks a subtle evolution in information operations because, by posting news about actual events, the accounts are clearly violating any terms of service and therefore have been able to avoid a general suspension, the company said. Researchers did not attribute the activity to a specific country or […]

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Russian Twitter bots laid dormant for months before impersonating activists

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Twitter accounts deployed by Russia’s troll factory in 2016 didn’t only spread disinformation meant to influence the U.S. presidential election. A small handful tried making a buck, too. An analysis of 3,836 Twitter accounts and nearly 10 million tweets published Wednesday by Symantec shows how Russian efforts to amplify propaganda went further than previously reported. The Kremlin’s Internet Research Agency thoughtfully planned its information operations, creating Twitter accounts an average of 177 days before sending the first tweet. Many accounts also posed as falsified news operations, and spread content meant to antagonize U.S. citizens across the political spectrum by impersonating users affiliated with pro-Trump and Black Lives Matter movements. Accounts typically remained active for 429 days, mostly from the beginning of 2015 through August 2016, when many suddenly went quiet. “Most accounts were primarily automated, but they would frequently show signs of manual intervention, such as posting original content or […]

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Middle East-linked social media accounts impersonated U.S. candidates before 2018 elections

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Social media users with ties to Iran are shifting their disinformation efforts by imitating real people, including U.S. congressional candidates, according to research published Tuesday. FireEye’s Threat Intelligence team said it had uncovered Twitter accounts that impersonated Republican congressional candidates in the buildup to the 2018 midterm elections, posting on politics and other topics. In some cases, FireEye suspects the actors were also able to have materials published in U.S. and Israeli media outlets. In a related announcement Tuesday, Facebook announced a takedown of fake accounts on Facebook and Instagram emanating from Iran that appeared to focus on outreach to policymakers. Facebook said the accounts and linked personas at times imitated legitimate news organizations in the Middle East and at other times purported to be journalists. Neither company attributed the information operations directly to the Iranian government, though FireEye said the actors appeared to be advocating for Iranian interests while Facebook and Twitter both […]

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Facebook scrubbed 2.2 billion fake accounts in the first quarter of 2019, a new high

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Facebook says its disabled roughly 2.2 billion fake accounts in the first quarter of this year, a record number of removals that targeted spammers, propagandists and others working to exploit the social media platform. The number is a sharp uptick compared to the 1.2 billion accounts removed between October and December, according to a Community Enforcement standards update released Thursday. The standards report provides evidence that the social media giant is making inroads to mitigating malicious activity on its services. Fake accounts made up roughly 5 percent of Facebook’s worldwide monthly active users during the first quarter of 2019. The overwhelming majority are detected within minutes of their registration, according to the company, meaning they are not included in Facebook’s active user metrics. “These numbers are driven largely by automated attacks by bad actors who try to create millions of accounts,” Facebook vice president of product management Guy Rosen said […]

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