Category Archives: information operations

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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Ex-US ambassador, anti-corruption activists in Ukraine were targets of suspected Russian phishing

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An ex-U.S. ambassador to Russia, anti-corruption activists in Ukraine and election observers in other parts of Eastern Europe were among the apparent targets of a suspected Russian state-sponsored hacking effort, according to data linked to the spying operation that a researcher shared with CyberScoop. The list offers classic examples of organizations that Russian spies might want to infiltrate, including those working to expose graft, combat disinformation and promote secure elections. It also points to the persistent threats that small nonprofits face from well-resourced hackers, as well as the long-running alleged Russian efforts to undermine democratic institutions. Microsoft on May 27 said hackers had used a breached account belonging to the U.S. Agency for International Development, a U.S. government agency, to send phishing emails to some 3,000 email accounts at 150 organizations in 24 countries (U.S. officials estimated an even broader set of targets: 7,000 accounts and 350 organizations.) Microsoft blamed […]

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Misinformation on Israel-Gaza violence prompts Facebook 24-hour tracking program

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Amid rampant misinformation spreading on social media about Israel’s attacks against targets in the Gaza Strip, Facebook has stood up a 24-hour operations center to address the lies spreading on its platform, Facebook said Wednesday. Israel’s escalating assault on targets in the Gaza Strip continued Wednesday and at least nine people died there Wednesday, according to The Associated Press. Israeli airstrikes have killed dozens of civilians in recent days, and in one of its deadliest bombardments yet, Israel killed 42 people on Sunday, according to Palestinian medics, CBS News reported. Hamas has launched missiles over Israel as well, killing numerous civilians. In all, 227 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Twelve people have been killed in Israel, according to The Associated Press. But in recent days misinformation and disinformation has tainted the discourse around the violence. Lies about the conflict that have spread online include misinformation […]

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Facebook is observing a ‘steady growth’ in disinformation-for-hire services

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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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Russian agent accused of interfering in US elections is back meddling online, Facebook says

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A man the U.S. intelligence community has assessed is an active Russian agent who interfered in U.S. elections is back stirring the pot on Facebook, the company announced Thursday. But this time, Andriy Derkach and associates appear to have been running influence operations targeted at Ukraine, not the U.S., Facebook said. The Treasury Department previously sanctioned Derkach, whom Treasury identified as being an “active Russian agent for over a decade,” for his alleged interference in U.S. elections. Facebook said it removed the Ukraine-targeted campaign, which used fake accounts and its own websites to amplify its messaging, for violating its coordinated inauthentic behavior policy last month. The campaign, which Facebook first caught onto following a tip from the FBI, focused on Ukraine politics and anti-Russia content. It’s not clear why a reputed Russian agent would circulate anti-Russia materials. The operators used multiple social media platforms and seemingly independent media websites and social […]

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Navalny adviser urges vigilance after impersonation attempts of Kremlin foes

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A top aide to jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny is urging Western policymakers and think tanks to be more wary of suspected Kremlin-backed information operations to undermine their work. Navalny, a prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been detained since January, when he returned to Russia after being poisoned with a chemical nerve agent last year. In February, a Russian court sentenced him to two years in prison in a case that human rights organizations have described as a “mockery” of justice. In the meantime, digital operatives have been posing as Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff — and other perceived threats to Kremlin interests — in apparent efforts to smear critics of the Russian government. “It looks like not enough lessons have been drawn from John Podesta clicking those phishing [links] back in 2016,” he said, referring to Russian intelligence agents’ breach of the Hillary Clinton […]

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‘Ghostwriter’ disinformation campaign rages on as Biden prepares for NATO trip

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For over a year, Stanislaw Zaryn, a Polish government official, has not been shy about exposing what he says are suspected Russian attempts to interfere in Polish politics. Zaryn has posted screenshots on Twitter of fake accounts and slapped a blaring “Disinformation” label on them. He has called out a forged letter that criticized the U.S. troop presence in Poland. But a study published by security firm FireEye on Wednesday makes clear that the propaganda flagged by Zaryn is but one front in a multi-pronged information operations effort aimed at sowing political discord in multiple NATO countries. FireEye has linked more than 30 such incidents in Lithuania, Latvia, Germany and elsewhere in the last five years to a previously disclosed, ongoing influence campaign it calls Ghostwriter. That includes more than 20 newly discovered Ghostwriter incidents since an initial FireEye report last summer, including one as recent as last month. The […]

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Twitter alarms users with messages that resembled phishing emails

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Twitter sparked a panic among some users that they were the subjects of a phishing attack in what was instead an accidental mass email. The message sent to some Twitter users went out Thursday, asking them to confirm their email addresses by clicking on a button. To many of those users who commented about it on the social media platform, it smelled like a possible phishing attempt. Twitter clarified what had happened later that same evening. “Some of you may have recently received an email to ‘confirm your Twitter account’ that you weren’t expecting,” the company said. “These were sent by mistake and we’re sorry it happened. If you received one of these emails, you don’t need to confirm your account and you can disregard the message.” In the cybersecurity sphere, Twitter usually gains the most attention for its efforts to combat online misinformation, or criticisms about how it’s handling […]

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NATO tests its hand defending against blended cyber-disinformation attacks

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Member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have banded together in recent days to confront an apparent cyberattack carried out against a NATO member’s critical infrastructure, according to the alliance. NATO is also working to battle a stream of disinformation about the attack against island state Berylia that has flooded social media, the alliance said. While many world leaders have faced off with blended cyber and disinformation operations in recent years, the NATO members in this case are not in fact facing a real threat. NATO crafted the scenario, which was carried out by a fabricated non-NATO nation-state “Crimsonia,” as part of an annual simulation exercise. Known as Locked Shields, it’s designed to test leaders’ readiness to deal with live cyberthreats. Berylia, the target of the fake attack and disinformation, is also an imagined state. The exercise — which had Crimsonia target Berylia’s financial services sector, mobile networks and […]

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U.S. intelligence community details destructive cyber capabilities, growing influence threats

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The intelligence community made its most direct public attribution yet that Russia was behind weaving malicious code into a SolarWinds software update to facilitate a sweeping espionage operation, impacting hundreds of companies and U.S. federal agencies. The intelligence community said Russia was behind the software supply chain hack in the intelligence community’s Annual Threat Assessment, which the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released Tuesday. “A Russian software supply chain operation against a US-based IT firm exposed approximately 18,000 customers worldwide, including enterprise networks across US Federal, state, and local governments,” the assessment notes, without naming SolarWinds. The intelligence community under the Trump administration had only previously stated that the operation was “likely” Russian in origin. The publication of the threat assessment coincides with President Joe Biden’s call with Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday, during which Biden “made clear that the United States will act firmly in defense of […]

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