Facebook has once again taken strong action against accounts and pages connected to a Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency or the country’s army intelligence sets that were being used for disinformation campaigns.
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Meanwhile, the FBI has issued a new warning about risk actors targeting US voting infrastructure. But it’s not the first time
On Thursday, Facebook announced that it had been undone from 3 networks with links to Russia from its platforms that included a lot of fake users, pages, computers and posts, each targeting another region with the aim of disseminating erroneous data or false policy data. and existing events.
“NetworksArray . . . It targeted many countries around the world and had very few subscribers in the world at the time of the outage,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, said in a blog post. “Much of this activity has turned to two Things: the creation of media entities and fictional or probably independent personalities to have involuntary interaction with Americans to magnify their content and take others to others controlled through those operations.
A network primarily targeting the United States included five Facebook accounts, one page, one organization, and 3 Instagram accounts, all of which gave the impression of being connected to the Internet Research Agency, the Russian organization that conducted an election-related misinformation crusade in 2016: Approximately 4,800 users followed at least one of the Facebook pages , and another 5,600 followed at least one of the Instagram accounts, the social media company reported.
Facebook says it has won from the FBI over those accounts and has begun investigating the network so the company calls “un authentic coordinated behavior. “
This is the time this month when Facebook has announced the closure of accounts and pages connected to the Russian IRA (see: Russian voter disinformation crusade is re-emerging).
The operators of the Russian IRA-linked network targeting the United States attempted to use social media accounts to direct users to an off-platform site that passed through an independent expert group founded in Turkey, according to Facebook.
Fake user accounts were passed down as U. S. , Canadian, and Turkish citizens looking to recruit others to write articles off the platform and also publish fake news, according to the social media company.
The other people of this activity have published articles outside the platform basically in English and Turkish about global news and events existing in the target countries, adding local elections; geopolitical conspiracies; presidential and legislative elections in Hong Kong, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States; social and racial injustice; police brutality; coronavirus pandemic; denouncing U. S. sanctions in the Middle East, U. S. foreign policy, and U. S. allies, adding Israel; Venezuela,” says Facebook.
In addition to removing the IRA-linked network, Facebook got rid of two other networks for the same kind of non-authentic behavior.
One network included 214 Facebook accounts, 35 pages, 18 teams and 34 Instagram accounts and was basically aimed at Syria and Ukraine, but also to Turkey, Japan, Armenia, Georgia, Belarus and Moldova. A small part of the network’s activity has also targeted the UK and the United States, according to Facebook. The social media company traced the accounts to members of the Russian army’s intelligence services.
The network, which included 23 Facebook accounts, six pages and 8 Instagram accounts, pointed almost exclusively to Belarus. These pages also go back to the Russian army, according to Facebook.
The social media giant’s movements opposing the 3 networks came here the same day the FBI, along with the U. S. Agency for Cyber Security and Infrastructure, issued a new warning that uns specified threats point to voting infrastructure.
“Cyber actors continue their attempts to oppose electoral systems that register the electorate or host voter registration information, administer un voted electoral processes, or provide unofficial reports on election night,” the agencies say. “These attempts can make these systems temporarily inaccessible to official elections, which can slow down, but would prevent, voting or communication of results. “
The FBI and CISA also note that “there have been no reports to suggest that cyber activity prevented a registered voter from voting, compromised the integrity of any poll, or affected the accuracy of voter registration information. “Local election officials may use provisional and paper surveys for voting integrity, according to agencies.
Earlier this week, the FBI and CISA warned of possible efforts by hackers in geographic regions, such as some cybercriminals, to use social media to cast doubt on the number of votes in November (see: FBI, CISA warn of campaigns to misinformation election results).
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