The Guardian: China spends billions on pro-Russia disinformation, US special envoy says. “The west has been slow to respond to China spending billions globally to spread poisonous disinformation, including messaging that is completely aligned with Russia on Ukraine, a US special envoy has claimed.”
Bleeping Computer: News Corp says state hackers were on its network for two years. “Mass media and publishing giant News Corporation (News Corp) says that attackers behind a breach disclosed in 2022 first gained access to its systems two years before, in February 2020.”
AFP: A year of disinformation around the war in Ukraine. “The war in Ukraine has been accompanied by a ferocious battle of disinformation, waged in particular by pro-Russian agitators seeking to distort and shift the blame for many atrocities on the ground. These agitators have sought to depict the Ukrainian side as Nazis or suggest that Western support for Kyiv is evaporating. Here are some of the main narratives, false or misleading, that have been fact-checked over the past year.”
BBC: Russia in Africa: How disinformation operations target the continent. “Russosphère describes itself as ‘a network in defence of Russia’. Made up of several social media groups on different platforms, it was created in 2021 but fully launched in February 2022 – just days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The network swiftly gained over 80,000 followers.”
Associated Press: Microsoft: Iran unit behind Charlie Hebdo hack-and-leak op. “After the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo launched a cartoon contest to mock Iran’s ruling cleric, a state-backed Iranian cyber unit struck back with a hack-and-leak campaign that was designed to provoke fear with the claimed pilfering of a big subscriber database, Microsoft security researchers say. The FBI blames the same Iranian cyber operators, Emennet Pasargad, for an influence operation that sought to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the tech giant said in a blog published Friday.”
Context News: Wikipedia Middle East editors ban shows risks for creators. “Rights groups have accused the Saudi Arabian government of ‘infiltrating’ and seeking to control Wikipedia, after the Wikimedia Foundation banned 16 users for engaging in ‘conflict of interest editing’ in the Middle East and North Africa.”
New York University: Exposure to Russian Twitter Campaigns in 2016 Presidential Race Highly Concentrated, Largely Limited to Strongly Partisan Republicans. “The study, which included researchers from the University of Copenhagen, Trinity College Dublin, and Technical University of Munich and examined social media users’ behaviors and attitudes in both April and October of 2016, also concluded that there was no relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior. Despite these results, the researchers caution that Russia attempts to alter the outcome of the election may have had other effects.”
Engadget: North Korean hackers targeted nearly 1,000 South Korean foreign policy experts. “South Korean authorities believe North Korean hackers, working for the government, have targeted at least 892 foreign policy experts in the country. The efforts focused on members of think tanks and academics, dating back to April.”
Ars Technica: TikTok cops to running “covert surveillance campaign” on Western journalists. “Following an internal investigation, TikTok owner ByteDance today confirmed reports from this fall that claimed some of its employees used the popular app to track multiple journalists, including two in the US. The ByteDance employees’ goal? To identify anonymous sources who were leaking information to the media on the company’s ties to the Chinese government, according to The New York Times.”
Reuters: Ex-Twitter worker gets 3-1/2-year U.S. prison term for spying for Saudi Arabia. “A former Twitter Inc manager convicted of spying for Saudi Arabia by sharing user data several years ago and potentially exposing users to persecution was sentenced to 3-1/2 years in prison on Wednesday, U.S. prosecutors said.”
Rolling Stone: Russian Trolls Made Fake Kid Rock Fan Accounts — and Fooled Donald Trump Jr.. “Researchers found Russian-linked fake accounts posing as authentic American conservatives cross-posting content to personas on Truth Social, Gab, and Gettr. While right-wing social platforms like Gab and Parler have previously played host to Russian influence operations, the report marks the first documented case of Russian meddling on Truth Social, the social media app founded by Trump.”
Human Rights Watch: Iran: State-Backed Hacking of Activists, Journalists, Politicians. “Hackers backed by the Iranian government have targeted two Human Rights Watch staff members and at least 18 other high-profile activists, journalists, researchers, academics, diplomats, and politicians working on Middle East issues in an ongoing social engineering and credential phishing campaign, Human Rights Watch said today.”
Bloomberg: India-Based Twitter Accounts Fanned UK Unrest, Researchers Say. “A network of fake accounts originating outside of the UK stoked violence between Muslims and Hindus in a British city earlier this year, according to research first provided to Bloomberg News.”
Bleeping Computer: Chinese hackers target government agencies and defense orgs. “A cyberespionage threat actor tracked as Billbug (a.k.a. Thrip, Lotus Blossom, Spring Dragon) has been running a campaign targeting a certificate authority, government agencies, and defense organizations in several countries in Asia. The most recent attacks were observed since at least March but the actor has been operating stealthily for more than a decade and it is believed to be a state-sponsored group working for China.”
Washington Post: Chinese hackers are scanning state political party headquarters, FBI says. “Chinese government hackers are scanning U.S. political party domains ahead of next month’s midterm elections, looking for vulnerable systems as a potential precursor to hacking operations, and the FBI is making a big push to alert potential victims to batten down the hatches.”
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