Category Archives: information operations

Twitter purges QAnon accounts; Facebook targets ‘Stop the Steal’

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The latest moves by Twitter and Facebook against misinformation look a lot like efforts from 2020. One platform suspended tens of thousands of accounts that were amplifying the QAnon conspiracy theory, and another is removing content suggesting that the election was rigged. Twitter said Tuesday it removed more than 70,000 accounts for “sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale,” one day after Facebook said it is targeting the phrase “stop the steal” — a favorite hashtag of President Donald Trump’s supporters — in the interest of stopping “misinformation and content that could incite further violence.” Both moves come as the social media giants have blocked Trump in the aftermath of the riot by right-wing extremists at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, which occurred as Congress was preparing to certify Joe Biden’s victory over the incumbent president in November’s elections. Twitter, Facebook and other Silicon Valley companies say incitements to violence […]

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Deepfake laws emerge as harassment, security threats come into focus

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A new flurry of state and federal legislation that aims to better understand the creation of doctored video and audio files — and help victims respond — couldn’t have come soon enough, analysts say.  The manipulated content, better known as deepfakes, has been used to falsely portray House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as ill or inebriated in a video that went viral in 2019. Other examples include a faked video of former president Obama, and an artificial intelligence service that has been enabling users to transform photos of women into nude pictures, enabling abuse, blackmail and other kinds of harassment.  Potential malicious uses of deepfakes include fraud, inciting acts of violence or sowing political unrest. Last week, several Trump supporters proposed on Parler that Trump’s concession speech may have been a manipulated video. The chatter is only more evidence that the existence of deepfakes, and the lack of truly effective screening […]

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Facebook bans Trump indefinitely; risks ‘simply too great,’ Zuckerberg says

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Facebook’s lockdown of President Donald Trump’s account will now last at least two weeks and possibly longer, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday morning. “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great,” Zuckerberg said in a post announcing that a 24-hour ban instituted Wednesday evening would be extended “indefinitely.” The lockdown also applies to Trump’s Instagram account. Zuckerberg’s decision comes as social media platforms continue to reckon with Trump’s incitement of a mob that entered the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday with the intent of disrupting the count of Electoral College ballots that would certify Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. Trump’s repetition Wednesday of baseless claims about election fraud capped weeks of buildup among supporters who planned to descend on Congress. Many of the conversations encouraging Americans to descend on the Capitol occurred on social […]

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Facebook, Twitter act on Trump’s false messaging after violence at Capitol

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Facebook and Twitter temporarily froze accounts belonging to President Donald Trump on Wednesday, hours after he continued to amplify false narratives that helped incite a violent mob at the Capitol Building. At 7:02 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, Twitter announced it was locking Trump out of his account for 12 hours after “repeated and severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy.” About 90 minutes later, Facebook announced that Trump’s account would be locked for 24 hours because of “two policy violations.” The bans came hours after Trump tweeted criticisms against Vice President Mike Pence for signaling that he would allow certification of the Electoral College count cementing Joe Biden’s election. The ballots had been legally cast, but some Trump loyalists in Congress questioned the results in a handful of states. Facebook and Twitter responded only after the White House posted a video in which Trump told the intruders in the […]

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Facebook says it disrupted cyber-espionage in Vietnam, Bangladesh

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Facebook says it has uncovered plots by two hacking campaigns to “abuse our platform, distribute malware and hack people’s accounts,” one originating in Vietnam, the other in Bangladesh. In a blog post late Thursday, two cybersecurity officials from the social media giant pinned the Vietnam-based activity on APT32, the advanced persistent threat group also known as Ocean Lotus. In Bangladesh, the perpetrators appear to be two largely unknown “non-profit” groups, Facebook says. “The operation from Vietnam focused primarily on spreading malware to its targets, whereas the operation from Bangladesh focused on compromising accounts across platforms and coordinating reporting to get targeted accounts and Pages removed from Facebook,” wrote Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of security policy and Mike Dvilyanski, its cyberthreat intelligence manager. APT32’s efforts involved a Vietnamese IT company, the researchers said, making it the latest example of hacking groups using corporate disguises. In early November, cybersecurity company Volexity […]

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Senators warn YouTube to buck up on misinformation

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YouTube has found itself in the crosshairs of a group of Democratic senators who want the Alphabet-owned video platform to take down misinformation about elections, false claims of voter fraud and content that could fuel civil unrest. In the buildup to the 2020 U.S. presidential elections, YouTube chose to not take down content that promotes false claims about the election or that challenges the credibility of election’s results. That policy is not enough to curb misinformation, the senators warned in a letter they sent Tuesday to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki. “[T]he platform is now home to an ‘onslaught of videos aiming to undermine the legitimacy of the election,’” wrote senators Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Gary Peters of Michigan and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. “These videos seek to undermine our democracy and cast doubt on the legitimacy of President-elect Biden’s incoming administration. Moreover, because the current president has […]

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UK launches cyber-operation against Russian disinformation on COVID-19 vaccine, report says

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The United Kingdom’s equivalent of the National Security Agency is actively trying to disrupt Russian attempts to cast doubt about attempts to develop a reliable coronavirus vaccine, the Times of London reported early Monday. The U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is using digital tools originally developed to tackle online propaganda and recruitment material from the Islamic State, sources told the newspaper. GCHQ declined to confirm or deny the existence of the cyber-operation, the Times said. “GCHQ has been told to take out antivaxers online and on social media,” a government source told The Times. “There are ways they have used to monitor and disrupt terrorist propaganda.” The sources who spoke to the Times noted the GCHQ operation only has the authority to disrupt information “from state adversaries,” and not information posted online by ordinary people. It’s unclear whether the U.S. government is mounting similar campaigns against foreign disinformation related to […]

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How the pandemic helped election officials prepare for a flood of misinformation

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As Americans await the results of a heated presidential contest, election officials are in the spotlight in a country on edge. They are trying to sift through a fog of domestic misinformation, and their methodical process for counting and verifying ballots is belying demands to hurry up, or stop. Now, security experts say months of extraordinary preparation during the coronavirus are paying off. After months of explaining how elections would work during a pandemic, state and local officials are projecting confidence to the public by being open about their work. Election officials have “transformed some of the challenges associated with COVID into opportunities to increase transparency and election administration education,” said Liz Howard, senior counsel at the Democracy Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “Before the election, when many election officials received calls and questions from voters about their absentee ballot security measures, many offered to provide tours of their offices to the […]

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Election-related misinformation is spilling into the real world. Just look at Arizona.

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When a group of pro-Trump protesters surrounded an election center in Arizona in the wee hours of Thursday morning, demonstrators chanted slogans echoing manufacuted narratives amplified by right wing social media users that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was somehow being stolen from President Donald Trump. While calling for officials in Maricopa County to count the ballots, demonstrators parroted the baseless allegations, some of which were initiated by Trump, who earlier tweeted that “we are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election.” In videos of the incident, protesters can be seen holding signs, at least one of which said, “Stop The Steal,” which appeared to be recycled from the hashtag #StopTheSteal, a hashtag that originally began spreading on Twitter on Election Day to suggest, without evidence, that officials somehow were defrauding Trump in Pennsylvania. Our crew being escorted out of ⁦@MaricopaVote⁩ #AZ2020 ⁦@FoxNews⁩ pic.twitter.com/LgiD56drFb — Alicia Acuna (@aacuna1) November 5, 2020 There is no evidence widespread election fraud has […]

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US seizes more domains with ties to suspected Iranian influence campaign

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The U.S. Department of Justice’s actions against alleged Iranian influence campaigns continued this week with the seizure of 27 internet domains, including four that the feds say were targeted directly at U.S. audiences. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) unlawfully used the domains in operations to “covertly influence” opinions in the U.S. and elsewhere, the department said in an announcement Wednesday. In early October, the feds seized 92 domains under similar allegations. Later that month, the Treasury Department sanctioned five Iran-linked organizations for spreading disinformation and making other attempts to sow discord in the U.S. As with previous announcements, U.S. officials cited help from Silicon Valley giants. “Thanks to our ongoing collaboration with Google, Facebook, and Twitter, the FBI was able to disrupt this Iranian propaganda campaign and we will continue to pursue any attempts by foreign actors to spread disinformation in our country,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Craig […]

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