Fighting a Disinformation War on Social Media

Disinformation is part of most military campaigns. And the Russian invasion of Ukraine is no exception.

Recently Facebook and parent company Meta said they suspended 40 fake accounts. Account creators had violated rules against coordinated hacks. And against disinformation campaigns pertaining to the war in Eastern Europe.

The group responsible is known as Ghostwriter. They gained access to some Facebook accounts registered in Ukraine. They then posted propaganda on those accounts. Including depicting Ukraine soldiers as weak. Or surrendering to Russian troops with a white flag. 

The same type of thing has occurred on YouTube, Twitter, TikTok and Telegram. As well as Russian social media sites such as VK and Odnoklassniki. Twitter said it suspended more than a dozen accounts and blocked several links.

Ghostwriter Targets Ukraine

In a statement, Meta said, “Ghostwriter typically targets people through email compromise. And then uses that to gain access to their social media accounts. And post disinformation as if it’s coming from the legitimate account owners. 

“We’ve taken steps to secure accounts that we believe were targeted by this threat actor. And, when we can, to alert the users that they had been targeted.

“We also blocked phishing domains these hackers used to try to trick people in Ukraine into compromising their online accounts.

“When we disrupted this network on our platform, it had fewer than 4,000 Facebook accounts following one or more of its pages. And fewer than 500 accounts following one or more of its Instagram accounts.”

Google took down several YouTube channels that were involved in the campaign. A spokesperson said fewer than 90 subscribers saw the videos in question.

Meta Responds With Shutdowns

Meta added that it shut down several pages claiming to be independent news outlets. That was due to unfounded accusations of Western betrayal of Ukraine. And Ukraine being a failed state.

They used fake personas, including computer-generated profile pictures, to masquerade as news outlets. They also attempted to hack Ukrainian military officials and journalists.

Of course, this type of thing works both ways. Numerous Russian media sites have also been hacked. Including news agency TASS, Kommersant and Izvestia.

Hackers displayed messages calling for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to end.

One message read this way. “Dear citizens. We urge you to stop this madness. Do not send your sons and husbands to certain death. Putin is forcing us to lie and is putting us in danger.”

Anonymous Aims at Russia in Cyber Battle

Some messages are displaying Russian war dead. One read: “More deaths than in the First Chechen War 1994-1996.”

Another message read: “We have been isolated from the whole world. They have stopped buying oil and gas. In a few years we will be living like North Korea.

“What is this for? So that Putin can get into the history books? It is not our war. Let’s stop him!”    

The hacker group Anonymous took credit for some of these hacks. Here’s what they said in a tweet. “The Anonymous collective is officially in cyber war against the Russian government.” 

Russia Complains of Censorship

As mentioned previously, disinformation is nothing new. It’s just more sophisticated these days.

Russia used fake social media accounts and bots to spread disinformation. During both its 2014 campaign to annex Crimea and in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. 

Meta and Google have blocked some Russian state media from access to Ukraine. That was at the request of the Ukrainian government.  

Two of those outlets, RT and Sputnik, have been barred for users in the European Union. The Russian government has accused Meta and Google of censorship.

Meta’s Countermeasures Explained

David Agranovich is director of threat disruption for Meta. Here’s what he told reporters regarding Ghostwriter.

“They would write an article, posting that article onto their website as if they were a reporter or commentator. And then the accounts were really just designed to post links to their own websites. And direct people off the platform. 

“We took this operation down. We’ve blocked their domains from being shared on our platform.

“And we’ve shared information about the operations with other tech platforms. (And) with researchers and with governments.”

Meta also banned Russian state media from running ads or making money on its platforms.

How to Protect Yourself

Meta has offered advice to Ukrainian and Russian social media users. We would do well to follow that same advice.

Included in their suggestions were:

• Lock your social media profiles
• Manage your friends and followers lists
• Secure your Instagram account
• Don’t open links and files from people you don’t know
• Refrain from using the same passwords across different services
• Use two-factor authentication on all online accounts

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