Independently, @mvanhulten of @TI_EU and @ArbiterOfTweets of @Knack found it with different methods.
It's not a friendly environment for fake campaigns, folks.
https://t.co/ASpAmH4ukz
Great report by @satariano on a fake network that @Graphika_NYC (and others) found in December.
Twitter accounts with GAN faces, boosting Huawei, boosted by Huawei execs, and attacking Belgium's 5G policies.
Not enough evidence to prove who ran them.
Independently, @mvanhulten of @TI_EU and @ArbiterOfTweets of @Knack found it with different methods.
It's not a friendly environment for fake campaigns, folks.
https://t.co/ASpAmH4ukz
"Alexandre, PhD", apparently a CEO.
But no surname, no indication of what he's a CEO of, and a GAN-generated profile pic.
Especially, Belgium's security limitations on 5G providers, which are reportedly mainly about Huawei and ZTE.
Alexandre didn't like the Belgian approach much.
They were meant to be about VR, as in virtual reality. Oddly, one was actually about Victorian Railways in Australia. Awkward.
Not infallible, and the GAN will get better fast, but... see how the eyeballs align?
Each posted 8-10 authored tweets, each a share of a web article plus a comment (usually in English), about #Belgium, #5G, #Huawei or #ZTE.
@satariano has some great insights into this one.
"New and relatively explosive."
Watch this space.
https://t.co/hlvobt9Z7V
Binnenkort publiceer ik nog een eigen follow-up analyse met nieuwe, relatief explosieve informatie. Stay tuned en zo. \U0001f62c
— Arbiter (@ArbiterOfTweets) January 29, 2021
Hier kan je het vorige stuk herlezen:https://t.co/DSTzpzCZ1f
When that happened, different fake accounts tweeted the same article from different sources - an attempt to make it harder to spot them all with a URL search?
12 assets, one article, 3 URLs.
They were attributed to the fake personas themselves.
Looks like the operation was going for the direct approach.
As far as we can tell, the article was planted on a website by one of the fake accounts.
Note the number of times each one mentioned one of the fake accounts (red box).
One was the theme. This looked like an exercise in dark lobbying: try and raise the heat on the Belgian government on an issue that's of interest to a corporate titan.
Business, not party politics.
Most of the influence ops we've tracked so far have been in the political or geopolitical space.
Dark lobbying like this will be something to watch for more.
We found it via Spamouflage. @mvanhulten and @ArbiterOfTweets spotted sponsored posts that led there.
There's a growing community of people who can spot this stuff, explain it and expose it.
Running influence ops may seem like an attractive option, but they're going to have to be a lot less dumb than this one was to avoid getting exposed.
But their exposure landed them in @nytimes and @knack, and not in a good way.
Was the operation worth the blowback? Let's keep watching to find out.
https://t.co/u0VOfoa4KN
More from Tech
I think about this a lot, both in IT and civil infrastructure. It looks so trivial to “fix” from the outside. In fact, it is incredibly draining to do the entirely crushing work of real policy changes internally. It’s harder than drafting a blank page of how the world should be.
I’m at a sort of career crisis point. In my job before, three people could contain the entire complexity of a nation-wide company’s IT infrastructure in their head.
Once you move above that mark, it becomes exponentially, far and away beyond anything I dreamed, more difficult.
And I look at candidates and know-everything’s who think it’s all so easy. Or, people who think we could burn it down with no losses and start over.
God I wish I lived in that world of triviality. In moments, I find myself regretting leaving that place of self-directed autonomy.
For ten years I knew I could build something and see results that same day. Now I’m adjusting to building something in my mind in one day, and it taking a year to do the due-diligence and edge cases and documentation and familiarization and roll-out.
That’s the hard work. It’s not technical. It’s not becoming a rockstar to peers.
These people look at me and just see another self-important idiot in Security who thinks they understand the system others live. Who thinks “bad” designs were made for no reason.
Who wasn’t there.
The tragedy of revolutionaries is they design a utopia by a river but discover the impure city they razed was on stilts for a reason.
— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) June 19, 2016
I’m at a sort of career crisis point. In my job before, three people could contain the entire complexity of a nation-wide company’s IT infrastructure in their head.
Once you move above that mark, it becomes exponentially, far and away beyond anything I dreamed, more difficult.
And I look at candidates and know-everything’s who think it’s all so easy. Or, people who think we could burn it down with no losses and start over.
God I wish I lived in that world of triviality. In moments, I find myself regretting leaving that place of self-directed autonomy.
For ten years I knew I could build something and see results that same day. Now I’m adjusting to building something in my mind in one day, and it taking a year to do the due-diligence and edge cases and documentation and familiarization and roll-out.
That’s the hard work. It’s not technical. It’s not becoming a rockstar to peers.
These people look at me and just see another self-important idiot in Security who thinks they understand the system others live. Who thinks “bad” designs were made for no reason.
Who wasn’t there.
On Wednesday, The New York Times published a blockbuster report on the failures of Facebook’s management team during the past three years. It's.... not flattering, to say the least. Here are six follow-up questions that merit more investigation. 1/
1) During the past year, most of the anger at Facebook has been directed at Mark Zuckerberg. The question now is whether Sheryl Sandberg, the executive charged with solving Facebook’s hardest problems, has caused a few too many of her own. 2/ https://t.co/DTsc3g0hQf
2) One of the juiciest sentences in @nytimes’ piece involves a research group called Definers Public Affairs, which Facebook hired to look into the funding of the company’s opposition. What other tech company was paying Definers to smear Apple? 3/ https://t.co/DTsc3g0hQf
3) The leadership of the Democratic Party has, generally, supported Facebook over the years. But as public opinion turns against the company, prominent Democrats have started to turn, too. What will that relationship look like now? 4/
4) According to the @nytimes, Facebook worked to paint its critics as anti-Semitic, while simultaneously working to spread the idea that George Soros was supporting its critics—a classic tactic of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. What exactly were they trying to do there? 5/
1) During the past year, most of the anger at Facebook has been directed at Mark Zuckerberg. The question now is whether Sheryl Sandberg, the executive charged with solving Facebook’s hardest problems, has caused a few too many of her own. 2/ https://t.co/DTsc3g0hQf
2) One of the juiciest sentences in @nytimes’ piece involves a research group called Definers Public Affairs, which Facebook hired to look into the funding of the company’s opposition. What other tech company was paying Definers to smear Apple? 3/ https://t.co/DTsc3g0hQf
3) The leadership of the Democratic Party has, generally, supported Facebook over the years. But as public opinion turns against the company, prominent Democrats have started to turn, too. What will that relationship look like now? 4/
4) According to the @nytimes, Facebook worked to paint its critics as anti-Semitic, while simultaneously working to spread the idea that George Soros was supporting its critics—a classic tactic of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. What exactly were they trying to do there? 5/
You May Also Like
fascinated by this man, mario cortellucci, and his outsized influence on ontario and GTA politics. cortellucci, who lives in vaughan and ran as a far-right candidate for the italian senate back in 2018 - is a major ford donor...
his name might sound familiar because the new cortellucci vaughan hospital at mackenzie health, the one doug ford has been touting lately as a covid-centric facility, is named after him and his family
but his name also pops up in a LOT of other ford projects. for instance - he controls the long term lease on big parts of toronto's portlands... where doug ford once proposed building an nfl stadium and monorail... https://t.co/weOMJ51bVF
cortellucci, who is a developer, also owns a large chunk of the greenbelt. doug ford's desire to develop the greenbelt has been
and late last year he rolled back the mandate of conservation authorities there, prompting the resignations of several members of the greenbelt advisory
his name might sound familiar because the new cortellucci vaughan hospital at mackenzie health, the one doug ford has been touting lately as a covid-centric facility, is named after him and his family
but his name also pops up in a LOT of other ford projects. for instance - he controls the long term lease on big parts of toronto's portlands... where doug ford once proposed building an nfl stadium and monorail... https://t.co/weOMJ51bVF
cortellucci, who is a developer, also owns a large chunk of the greenbelt. doug ford's desire to develop the greenbelt has been
and late last year he rolled back the mandate of conservation authorities there, prompting the resignations of several members of the greenbelt advisory
