A summer of cyber threats and controversies

Article - Matei Norbert Balan

Web 2.0 was supposed to be a safer space for all of us, just like social media came with the promise that it would connect and unite us for the better. We are slowly becoming disillusioned with these beautiful narratives. Here is a brief summer recap of the most worrying activity in the realm of suspicious cyber activities.

Foto: Austin Distel/ Unsplash

What you see on your screens perhaps matters more now than it ever did. First, our social lives have become intrinsically linked to the many social and professional networks we use along with all the devices, apps, and software. Then second, this has creted a direct line to our private data. This, as we have seen in the past, can be used to not only casually misinform us, but outright manipulate us . And when it comes to cyber manipulation and disinformation, this summer has been riddled with it.

In the July 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report, Facebook announced that in July alone it had to remove a vast number of fake accounts and groups that were pushing a disinformation agenda. The bit of information that made the new world wide was, not surprinsngly by now, linked to the Romania based troll farm which was posing as an online community of African-Americans who support Donal Trump. The users were posting using tags such as ‘BlackPeopleVoteForTrump. According to the report this network had thousands of followers and “posted about US domestic news and events, including the upcoming November election, the Trump campaign and support for the campaign by African Americans, conservative ideology, Christian beliefs, and Qanon. They also frequently reposted stories by American conservative news networks and the Trump campaign.”.

But the US shouldn’t and must not be our only concern. The same report gives details about removing fake accounts linked to Iraq and Switzerland, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Canada and Ecuador, and Brazil, where the inauthentic behavior was traced directly to “employees of the offices of Anderson Moraes, Alana Passos, Eduardo Bolsonaro, Flavio Bolsonaro and Jair Bolsonaro”.

Setting Facebook matters aside, state coordinated cyber attacks have been raging across the world too. In July, in an advisory report, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) detailed how the Russia-linked cyber espionage group commonly known as ‘APT29’ (known as ‘the Dukes’ or ‘Cozy Bear’) has targeted a number of organisations involved in COVID-19 vaccine development troughout the Western world. The report explains how APT29 is using custom malware known as ‘WellMess’ and ‘WellMail’ to target the organizations with the intention of stealing valuable research.