A pro-China online network is seeking to undermine voter acceptance as true ahead of the midterm elections in one of several disinformation campaigns targeting the United States, cybersecurity company Mandiant said Wednesday.
Researchers at the Google subsidiary said the “Dragon Bridge” campaign, a well-known news operation with alleged ties to Beijing, could simply sign China’s official access to U. S. election meddling. However, this has been very effective.
Questionable online accounts have driven narratives, adding a claim that APT41, a hacking organization with alleged ties to China’s Ministry of State Security, is subsidized through the U. S. government. Others allege U. S. involvement. The U. S. Department of Defense in the Nord Stream pipeline explosions.
However, since September, cybersecurity researchers have known of “aggressive attempts to discredit the U. S. democratic process. “U. S. Attempts to Dissuade Americans from Voting in U. S. Midterm ElectionsUU. de 2022. “
Popular tactics include impersonating fact-checkers, switching news articles to fabricate content, and posing as American Twitter users to spread stories about racial confrontations and social injustice online.
Additional lines come with announcing the likelihood of a “civil war” and the ultimate collapse of democratic establishments in the United States by highlighting political infighting and partisan prejudice, according to the report.
The videos of dubious origin were also aimed at undermining acceptance as true and discouraging voting by denigrating the legislative process.
The goal, Mandiant said, is to divide Americans and “sow discord and discontent within American society,” as well as between the United States and its allies.
The company said Dragonbridge was evaluated “with great confidence in the political interests of the People’s Republic of China. “
The stories relayed to Americans online also closely resemble social media posts by Chinese diplomats and state media workers, who have mocked the tragedies of national governance in the United States and have also used the Jan. 6 Capitol attack to deflect complaints about China’s restrictive policies. political formula and trajectory in the field of human rights.
Dragonbridge is one of two major pro-China disinformation campaigns, along with “HaiEnergy,” Mandiant told Newsweek.
Dragonbridge operates “on dozens of platforms/websites with a bunch of accounts,” the company said, but the scale of its operations is not an indication of success.
“Given the very limited engagement noted that the activity receives, the Dragonbridge crusade does not appear to be particularly effective,” Mandiant said.
“More broadly, data operations campaigns vary in effectiveness: some seem to get more original engagement than others. These campaigns vary in the tactics they use to verify success in their target audiences, and their success also varies accordingly,” he said. .
Malicious cybercriminals have several gifts, according to cybersecurity researchers. Account profile pictures are taken from a variety of sources, adding inventory images, suggesting an attempt to “hide your identity. “
Accounts displaying similar or equal content were created around a similar date, demonstrating what Mandiant called “batch creation. “Their usernames also adhere to a trend consisting of English names and a number of possible random numbers.
John Hultquist, Mandiant’s lead intelligence officer, told Newsweek: “The U. S. government is in the U. S. government. The U. S. is already taking a more competitive stance when it comes to campaigns like this. We will have this position before the elections, but also after, because it is good. “
Wednesday’s Mandiant report said Dragonbridge’s “aggressiveness, debauchery and perseverance demonstrate the intent and resilience of the campaign’s actors. “
“Despite the limited impact of cross-operations, it continues to waste significant resources to conduct and perform multiple operations simultaneously,” the company said.
In June, the Pentagon identified Mandiant’s paintings by exposing a Dragonbridge crusade against Australian mining company Lynas Rare Earths some time after it won a $120 million contract from the Defense Department to build a processing plant in Texas.
The task is part of the Biden administration’s attempt to make the United States and its allies dependent on China in their occasional terrestrial chain of origin. Mandiant uncovered pro-China accounts criticizing Lynas’ alleged environmental record and mobilizing protests against the plant’s construction.
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