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Andy Greenberg
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In recent years, incorrect online information has made evolutionary leaps, with the Internet Research Agency provoking synthetic outrage on social media and hackers revealing documents, genuine and fabricated, based on their narrative. More recently, Eastern Europe has faced a great crusade that takes fake news to another level: hacking valid news sites to plant fake stories and then amplifying them on social media before eliminating them.
On Wednesday, security company FireEye released a report on an organization focused on misinformation it calls Ghostwriter. Propagandists have been creating and disseminating incorrect information since at least March 2017, focusing on undermining NATO and US troops in Poland and the Baltic countries; have posted fake content on everything from social media to pro-Russian news. In some cases, says FireEye, Ghostwriter has deployed a bolder tactic: hacking news content control systems to publish their own stories. They then spread their fake literal news with fake emails, social media, and even editorials that propagandists write on other sites that settle for user-generated content.
This hacking campaign, aimed at media sites from Poland to Lithuania, spread false stories about the aggression of the US military, NATO infantry soldiers spreading the coronavirus, NATO making plans for a general invasion of Belarus, etc. “They spread these stories that NATO is a danger, which resent them. people, who are infected, who are car thieves,” says John Hultquist, Director of Intelligence at FireEye. “And they spread these stories in a variety of ways, the ultimate appeal of which is to hack and implement local media websites. These fictional stories are original through the sites they are located in, and then enter and spread the link to the story.”
FireEye itself has not conducted an incident reaction investigation into such incidents and admits that it does not know precisely how hackers use borrowed credentials that give them access to content control systems that allow them to publish and edit news. You also don’t know who the series of commitments is on the website, or for that matter, the broader disinformation crusade of which fake stories are part.
But the company’s analysts found that the news site included compromises and that online accounts were used to spread links to those made-up stories, as well as the more classic creation of fake news on social media, blogs and websites with an anti-American and anti-NATO folded, all connected to a set other than charactersArray indicating a unified effort of incorrect information. FireEye’s Hultquist says the crusade does not appear to have a financial motivation, indicating political or state support, and notes that the emphasis on widening the gap between NATO and Eastern European citizens alludes to Russia’s imaginable participation.
Nor would it be the first time that Russian hackers have planted fake news; In 2017, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russian hackers had breached Qatar’s state news firm and falsified a false report with the intention of shaming the country’s leader and causing a break with the U.S. intelligence. He never showed the Kremlin’s involvement.
“We can’t link it to Russia at this time, but it actually suits your interests,” Hultquist said of the Ghostwriter campaign. “It wouldn’t be surprising to me if that’s where the evidence takes us.”
Much of the incorrect information has been directed to Lithuania, as reported through DefenceOne late last year. In June 2018, for example, English news to the Baltic published an article stating that a US armored vehicle Stryker had collided with a Lithuanian child on a bicycle, killing the child “on the spot.” On the same day, the Baltic Course issued a notice that “pirates have posted this news about the deceased child, which is FALSE! We thank our attentive Lithuanian readers who have posted fake news on our Facebook page in the Array. intensified security measures.”
A few months later, the online Lithuanian news page Kas Vyksta Kaune published an article noting that “NATO plans to invade Belarus,” with a map of how NATO forces in Polish and Baltic countries would enter the neighboring country. Kas Vyksta Kaune later admitted that the story was false and had been planted through pirates. Someone had used a former worker’s credentials to access the CMS. Then, in September last year, another false story was posted on the site about German NATO infantrymen desecrating a Jewish cemetery, adding what FireEye describes as a photographed symbol of an army vehicle with a German flag on the cemetery.
More recently, false stories have attempted to exploit Covid-19’s fears. An article published in Kas Vyksta Kaune and Baltic Times in English in January stated that the first case of Covid-19 in Lithuania was an American soldier hospitalized in critical condition, but only after “visiting public places and participating in the city”. occasions with the participation of young people and young people, “according to the version of the Baltic Times tale.
In April and May this year, the focus was on Poland: a false story published on several Polish news sites in which a U.S. official denigrated local Polish forces as disorganized and incompetent. This time, the crusade went even beyond news sites. A false letter from a Polish army officer published on the Polish Military Academy’s online page, in which he calls on the Polish army to stop army training with the United States, denounces Poland’s U.S. “occupation” and calls the training an “obvious provocation.” through Russia.Array The Polish government temporarily described the letter as false.
FireEye’s discovery that all such operations aimed at sowing fake data were conducted through a single organization follows a New York Times report that the Russian Army intelligence agency, the GRU, is coordinating the publication of disdata on sites such as InfoRos.Array OneWorld.press and GlobalResearch.ca. U.S. intelligence officials who spoke with The Times said the disdata campaign, which included false reports about the U.S. Covid-19, in particular the paintings of the GRU’s “psychological warfare unit,” known as Unit 54777.
Given the GRU’s role in interfering with the 2016 presidential election, adding its hacking and filtering operations opposed to the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, any GRU’s role in the most recent misinformation raises fears that it will also point to the 2020 election. . Although FireEye did not claim that the commitments of the Ghostwriter news site were the GRU paintings, Hultquist argues that the incidents in Poland and the Baltic countries nevertheless serve as a warning. Even if false stories are known and temporarily deleted, they can have a significant transitority effect on public opinion, he warns.
“My fear is that we may see these kinds of media tactics compromised in the West and even in elections. It’s the best kind of last-minute tactic,” Hultquist said. “Once the genie is out of the bottle, can you give it to him? Can you make other people perceive that it was a foreign force that drove this story? Maybe it’s too late.”