Threat Source newsletter (Oct. 20, 2022) — Shields Up! No seriously, Shields Waaaaay Up

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Im very excited about this video -- its a project Ive been working on with my team for a while now. Building off what Ive written about in the past regarding fake news, this video examines what essentially equates to t...

Video: How propaganda can spread on social media via memes, fake news

Cisco Talos is well-known for its work in spotting and defeating fake news, disinformation and misinformation. And state-sponsored actors, unwitting social media users and even direct government agencies have played a part in spreading fake news during Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In this video,...

Video: How propaganda can spread on social media via memes, fake news

Cisco Talos is well-known for its work in spotting and defeating fake news, disinformation and misinformation. And state-sponsored actors, unwitting social media users and even direct government agencies have played a part in spreading fake news during Russias invasion of Ukraine. In this video,...

Facebook Shuts Down Covert Political 'Influence Operations' from Russia and China

Meta Platforms on Tuesday disclosed it took steps to dismantle two covert influence operations originating from China and Russia for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior CIB so as to manipulate public debate. While the Chinese operation sets its sights on the U.S. and the Czech Republic,...

A US Propaganda Operation Hit Russia and China With Memes

Plus: An Iranian hacking tool steals inboxes, LastPass gets hacked, and a deepfake scammer targets the crypto world...

Vulnerability Management news and publications #2

Hello everyone! This is the second episode of Vulnerability Management news and publications. In fact, this is a collection of my posts from the avleonovcom and avleonovrus telegram channels. Therefore, if you want to read them earlier, subscribe to these channels. The main idea of ​​this episode...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday July 2022: propaganda report, CSRSS EoP, RPC RCE, Edge, Azure Site Recovery

Hello everyone! Microsoft has been acting weird lately. I mean the recent publication of a propaganda report about evil Russians and how Microsoft is involved in the conflict between countries. It wouldnt be unusual for a US government agency, NSA or CIA to publish such a report. But when a globa...

State-Backed Hackers Targeting Journalists in Widespread Espionage Campaigns

Nation-state hacking groups aligned with China, Iran, North Korea, and Turkey have been targeting journalists to conduct espionage and spread malware as part of a series of campaigns since early 2021. "Most commonly, phishing attacks targeting journalists are used for espionage or to gain key...

How One Company Helps Keep Russia’s TV Propaganda Machine Online

Russia is using satellites controlled by French operator Eutelsat to broadcast state-run programming. A grassroots group is pushing for that to stop...

amsterdam.propaganda.nl Cross Site Scripting vulnerability OBB-2360149

Following the coordinated and responsible vulnerability disclosure guidelines of the ISO 29147 standard, Open Bug Bounty has: a. verified the vulnerability and confirmed its existence; b. notified the website operator about its existence. Technical details of the vulnerability are currently hidde...

China Aims Its Propaganda Firehose at the BBC

The alleged digital operation has deployed hundreds of websites and social media accounts to attack the broadcaster's reporting...

Telegram Fraudsters Ramp Up Forged COVID-19 Vaccine Card Sales

Telegram groups are being abused by fraudsters peddling fake COVID-19 vaccination cards to the unvaccinated and anti-vaxxer communities, according to researchers. Brittany Allen, trust and safety architect at Sift, noticed the illicit sales on the encrypted messaging platform as the COVID-19...

Election Cyber Threats in the Asia-Pacific Region

In democratic societies, elections are the mechanism for choosing heads of state and policymakers. There are strong incentives for adversary nations to understand the intentions and preferences of the people and parties that will shape a country's future path and to reduce uncertainty about likel...

Iranian Advanced Persistent Threat Actor Identified Obtaining Voter Registration Data

Summary This advisory uses the MITRE Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge ATT &CK® version 8 framework. See the ATT&CK for Enterprise version 8 for all referenced threat actor techniques. This joint cybersecurity advisory was coauthored by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure...

Twitter Disrupts Wide-Ranging Political Disinformation Campaigns

Twitter has taken down three separate nation-sponsored influence operations, attributed to the People’s Republic of China PRC, Russia and Turkey. Collectively the operations consisted of 32,242 bogus or bot accounts generating the content and various amplifier accounts that retweeted it. “Every...

Artificial Personas and Public Discourse

Presidential campaign season is officially, officially, upon us now, which means it's time to confront the weird and insidious ways in which technology is warping politics. One of the biggest threats on the horizon: artificial personas are coming, and they're poised to take over political debate...

Influence Operations Kill Chain

Influence operations are elusive to define. The Rand Corp.'s definition is as good as any: "the collection of tactical information about an adversary as well as the dissemination of propaganda in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent." Basically, we know it when we see it, from bots...

Fake News and Influence: Information Warfare in the Digital Age

It’s 2019 and we live in a world where understanding what is real and what is fake can be challenging. For the security community, we increasingly deal with information warfare adversaries that rely on that fact; and, operating at internet scale, are capable of causing plenty of havoc...

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 investigation shows Russian disinformation campaigns have global reach

A little background: on July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot from the sky on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur above the Ukraine. The plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile, and as a result, all 298 people on board were killed. At that time, there was a revolt of pro-Russia...

5,000 Twitter Accounts Linked to Disinformation Campaigns

Twitter has removed six sets of accounts that the site has deemed to be devoted to coordinated, state-backed propaganda activities – totaling about 5,000 accounts in all. “We believe that people and organizations with the advantages of institutional power and which consciously abuse our service a...