Oxford Disinfo Report: India, Pakistan Among Top Nations With "High Cyber Capacity"
Oxford University's report on global disinformation ranks India and Pakistan among top 17 "high cyber troop capacity" countries. The report defines "cyber troop capacity" in terms of numbers of people and the size of budget allocated to psychological operations or information warfare. "Cyber troop activity" as defined by the report includes social media manipulation by governments and political parties, and the various private companies and other organizations they work with to spread disinformation. Oxford report shows that India's cyber troops are "centralized" while those in Pakistan, US and UK are "decentralized". EU Disinfo Lab, an NGO that specializes in disinformation campaigns, has found that India is carrying out a massive 15-year-long disinformation campaign to hurt Pakistan.
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| High Cyber Capacity Countries. Source: Oxford University Disinfo Report 2020 |
High Cyber Capacity:
"High cyber troop capacity involves large numbers of staff, and large budgetary expenditure on psychological operations or information warfare. There might also be significant funds spent on research and development, as well as evidence of a multitude of techniques being used. These teams do not only operate during elections but involve full-time staff dedicated to shaping the information space. High-capacity cyber troop teams focus on foreign and domestic operations. They might also dedicate funds to state-sponsored media for overt propaganda campaigns. High-capacity teams include: Australia, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, and Vietnam".
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| American Analyst Michael Kugelman's Tweet on Indian Disinformation Campaign |
Firehose of Falsehood:
What Kugelman calls "Russian Operation" appears to be a reference to a US government-funded think tank RAND Corporation's report entitled "The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model". Here is an except of the RAND report:
"Russian propaganda is produced in incredibly large volumes and is broadcast or otherwise distributed via a large number of channels. This propaganda includes text, video, audio, and still imagery propagated via the Internet, social media, satellite television, and traditional radio and television broadcasting. The producers and disseminators include a substantial force of paid Internet “trolls” who also often attack or undermine views or information that runs counter to Russian themes, doing so through online chat rooms, discussion forums, and comments sections on news and other websites".
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| EU Disinformation Lab Report on India's Disinformation Campaign Against Pakistan |
Indian Political Unity Against Pakistan:
Former US President Barack Obama has observed that “Expressing hostility toward Pakistan was still the quickest route to national unity (in India)”. The Indian disinformation campaign is a manifestation of Indians' political unity against Pakistan. EU Disinfo Lab has found that Indian Chronicles is a 15-year-long campaign that started in 2005 on former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's watch, well before Prime Minister Narendra Modi's election to India's highest office in 2014. It has grown to over 750 fake media outlets covering 119 countries. There are over 750 domain names, some in the name of dead people and others using stolen identities. Here is an excerpt of EU Disinfo Lab's report:
"The creation of fake media in Brussels, Geneva and across the world and/or the repackaging and dissemination via ANI and obscure local media networks – at least in 97 countries – to multiply the repetition of online negative content about countries in conflict with India, in particular Pakistan".PTM: Lowdown on Manzoor Pashteen
East Pakistan "Genocide" Headline
Ex Indian Spy On RAW's Successes Against Pakistan
Free Speech: Myth or Reality?
Social Media Tribalism
Social Media: Blessing or Curse For Pakistan?
Planted Stories in Media
Indian BJP Troll Farm
Kulbhushan Jadhav Caught in Balochistan
The Story of Pakistan's M8 Motorway
Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel
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In India, cyber troop activity was found in two instances by a political party or politicians, three or more instances by a private contractor, on one instance by civil society organisation, and one by citizens and influencers.
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-pakistan-among-7-nations-with-state-actors-active-online-for-propaganda-study-6035217/
India figures in a small bunch of seven countries — along with China, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela — where state actors use computational propaganda on Facebook and Twitter to influence global audiences, according to a comprehensive report on disinformation campaigns released by the Computational Propaganda project at Oxford on Thursday.
The report found at least seven instances of “cyber troops” in India, and private contractors came out to be the most active “cyber troops” in the country.
These troops are “government or political party actors tasked with manipulating public opinion online”, according to the report, and only Malaysia, Philippines, the UAE, and the US had as many or more instances as India. The report labelled India as “medium-capacity” for “cyber troops”. It stated, “Multiple teams ranging in size from 50-300 people. Multiple contracts and advertising expenditures valued at over 1.4M US.” Other countries in the category are Brazil, Pakistan, and the UK.
Over three years, the researchers examined 70 countries in which these operations do three things: suppress fundamental human rights, discredit political opposition, and drown out political dissent.
In India, cyber troop activity was found in two instances by a political party or politicians, three or more instances by a private contractor, on one instance by civil society organisation, and one by citizens and influencers.
In the first big crackdown on fake accounts for “inauthentic behaviour” in the run-up to Lok Sabha polls in April, Facebook removed more than 700 pages, groups and accounts from India. Those taken down include accounts associated with the Congress IT cell and Silver Touch Technologies, a company that has worked for the government and the BJP. They were taken down for attempts to deceive users of their identities, according to the company.
The report found that in India, bot-led automated manipulation as well as human-led manipulation spread propaganda for a party, attacked its political opposition, and spread polarising messaging designed to drive divisions.
In India, it found the use of disinformation and media manipulation, data-driven strategies, amplifying content by flooding hashtags, and troll armies that harass dissidents or journalists online. The only technique that the researchers did not find in India that was present in other countries was mass-reporting of content or accounts.
“The co-option of social media technologies provides authoritarian regimes with a powerful tool to shape public discussions and spread propaganda online, while simultaneously surveilling, censoring, and restricting digital public spaces,” the report says.
Of the 70 countries, 44 had campaigns conducted by government actors, such as a digital ministry or the military, and 45 had campaigns led by political parties or politicians, the report found. This is a 150-per cent increase in countries using organised social media manipulation campaigns.
This year, 70 countries saw campaigns of this kind; the corresponding figures 48 in 2018, and 28 in the year before.
The methodology involved news reporting analysis, a secondary literature review of public archives and scientific reports, drafting country case studies, and expert consultations.
On a platform-wise breakdown of the campaigns, India appeared on Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter but not on YouTube and Instagram. Even with a growth of these activities on WhatsApp, Instagram and YouTube, the report found that Facebook still firmly remained the platform with the most manipulation activity.
Lookout, Inc., provider of mobile security solutions, announced the discovery of two novel Android surveillanceware, Hornbill and SunBird. The Lookout Threat Intelligence team believes these campaigns are connected to the Confucius APT, a well-known pro-India state-sponsored advanced persistent threat group. Hornbill and SunBird have sophisticated capabilities to exfiltrate SMS message content, encrypted messaging app content, geolocation, contact information, call logs, as well as file and directory listings. The surveillanceware targets personnel linked to Pakistan’s military and nuclear authorities and Indian election officials in Kashmir.
The Confucius group was previously reported to have first leveraged mobile malware in 2017 with ChatSpy[1]. However, based on this new discovery, Lookout researchers found that Confucius may have been spying on mobile users for up to a year prior to ChatSpy with SunBird. SunBird campaigns were first detected by Lookout researchers in 2017 but no longer seem to be active. The APT’s latest malware, Hornbill, is still actively in use and Lookout researchers have observed new samples as recently as December 2020.
“One characteristic of Hornbill and SunBird that stands out is their intense focus on exfiltrating a target's communications via WhatsApp,” said Apurva Kumar, Staff Security Intelligence Engineer at Lookout. “In both cases, the surveillanceware abused the Android accessibility services in a variety of ways to exfiltrate communications without the need for root access. SunBird can also record calls made through WhatsApp’s VoIP service, exfiltrate data on applications such as BlackBerry Messenger and imo, as well as execute attacker-specified commands on an infected device.”
Both Hornbill and SunBird appear to be evolved versions of commercial Android surveillance tooling. Hornbill was likely derived from the same code base as an earlier commercial surveillance product known as MobileSpy. Meanwhile, SunBird can be linked back to the Indian developers responsible for BuzzOut, an older commercial spyware tool. The Lookout researchers' theory that SunBird’s roots also lay in stalkerware is supported by content found in the exfiltrated data that they uncovered on the malware’s infrastructure in 2018. The data uncovered includes information about the stalkerware victims and campaigns targeting Pakistani nationals in their home country as well as those traveling abroad in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and India.
https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/indian-cyber-espionage-activity-rising-amid-growing-rivalry-with-china-pakistan
ANALYSIS India is sometimes overlooked by some in the threat intelligence community, even though the South Asian nation has advanced cyber capabilities – not least a huge pool of talent.
The country boasts a large number of engineers, programmers, and information security specialists, but not all of this tech talent was put to good use, even before the Covid-19 pandemic cast a shadow over the global economy.
Their somewhat limited employment prospects are said to have created a swarm of underground Indian threat actors eager to show off their hacking talents and make money – a resource that the Indian government might be able to tap into in order to bolster its own burgeoning cyber-espionage resources.
India is in catch-up mode for now, but has the technical resources to make rapid progress.
Who is being targeted by Indian hacking groups?
Geopolitical factors have fueled an increase in cyber threat activity both originating from and targeting India.
Experts quizzed by The Daily Swig were unanimous in saying that the most important target of Indian cyber-espionage by far is Pakistan – a reflection of the decades-long struggle over the disputed region of Kashmir.
China, India’s neighbour and an ally of Pakistan, is also a top target of state-sponsored Indian cyber-espionage.
Paul Prudhomme, head of threat intelligence advisory at IntSights, told The Daily Swig: “Indian cyber-espionage differs from that of other top state-sponsored threats, such as those of Russia and China, in the less ambitious geographic scope of their attacks.”
Other common targets of Indian hacking activity include other nations of the South Asian subcontinent, such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Indian espionage groups may sometimes expand their horizons further to occasional targets in Southeast Asia or the Middle East.
Indian cyber-espionage groups typically seek information on Pakistan’s government, military, and other organizations to inform and improve its own national security posture.
But this is far from the only game in town.
For example, one Indian threat group called ‘Dark Basin’ has allegedly targeted advocacy groups, senior politicians, government officials, CEOs, journalists, and human rights activists across six continents over the last seven years.
India is currently considered to have a less mature cyber warfare armoury and capability than the ‘Big Six’ – China, North Korea, Russia, Israel, the UK, and US – but this may change over time since its capability is growing.
Chris Sedgwick, director of security operations at Talion, the managed security service spinoff of what used to be BAE System’s intelligence division, commented:
The sophistication of the various Indian cyber threat actors do not appear to be in the same league as China or Russia, and rather than having the ability to call on a cache of 0-day exploits to utilise, they have been known to use less sophisticated – but still fairly effective – techniques such as decoy documents containing weaponised macros.
Indian officials are investigating whether cyberattacks from China could have been behind a blackout in Mumbai last year.
State officials in Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, said Monday that an initial investigation by its cyber department found evidence that China could have been behind a power outage that left millions without power in October.
It was the worst blackout in decades in India’s financial capital, stopping trains and prompting hospitals to switch to diesel powered generators. The megacity has long prided itself on being one of the few cities in India with uninterrupted power supply even as most of the country struggles with regular blackouts.
Anil Deshmukh, home minister of the state, said officials were investigating a possible connection between the blackout and a surge in cyberattacks on the servers of the state power utilities. He wouldn’t single out China, but said investigators had found evidence of more than a dozen Trojan horse attacks as well as suspicious data transfers into the servers of state power companies.
“There were attempts to login to our servers from foreign land,” said Mr. Deshmukh. “We will investigate further.”
Another state official said 8GB of unaccounted for data slipped into power company servers from China and four other countries between June and October. The official cited thousands of attempts by blacklisted IP addresses to access the servers.
State-sponsored hackers increasingly target critical infrastructure such as power grids instead of specific institutions, said Amit Dubey, a cybersecurity expert at Root64 Foundation, which conducts cybercrime investigations.
“Anything and everything is dependent on power,” Mr. Dubey said. Targeting power supply, he said, can “take down hundreds of plants or day-to-day services like trains.”
Mr. Dubey said many countries such as China, Russia and Iran are deploying state-sponsored hackers to target the power grids of other nations. Russian hackers succeeded in turning off the power in many parts of Ukraine’s capital a few years ago, he said, and have also attacked critical infrastructure in the U.S. in recent years.
India’s announcement came after U.S. cybersecurity firm Recorded Future on Sunday published a report outlining what it said were attacks from close to a China-linked group it identified as RedEcho. It cited a surge in attacks targeting India’s power infrastructure.
The report said the attacks could have been a reaction to the jump in border tension between the two countries. During a military skirmish in June, India said 20 Indian soldiers were killed and China said four Chinese soldiers were killed when soldiers fought with rocks, batons and clubs wrapped in barbed wire.
In response to the Recorded Future report, which was earlier reported by the New York Times, China said it doesn’t support cyberattacks.
“It is highly irresponsible to accuse a particular party when there is no sufficient evidence around,” Wang Wenbin, spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a briefing Monday. “China is firmly opposed to such irresponsible and ill-intentioned practice.
Recorded Future said it couldn’t directly connect the attacks to the Mumbai blackout because it doesn’t have access to any hardware that might have been infected.
India’s Ministry of Power said it has dealt with the threats outlined in the Recorded Future report by strengthening its firewall, blocking IP addresses and using antivirus software to scan and clean its systems software.
Cyberpower, in the study, is measured on seven parameters: from strategy to cybersecurity. India’s reform in cyber governance has been slow. It should better harness its digital start-up ecosystem, says the study.
Greg Austin, who leads the IISS programme on Cyber, Space and Future Conflict and played a leading role in the preparation of the report, told The Indian Express Sunday: “India has some cyber-intelligence and offensive cyber capabilities but they are regionally focused, principally on Pakistan. It is currently aiming to compensate for its weaknesses by building new capability with the help of key international partners – including the US, the UK and France – and by looking to concerted international action to develop norms of restraint.”
The report said that India’s approach towards institutional reform of cyber governance has been “slow and incremental”, with key coordinating authorities for cyber security in the civil and military domains established only as late as 2018 and 2019 respectively.
These work closely with the main cyber-intelligence agency, the National Technical Research Organisation.
“India has a good regional cyber-intelligence reach but relies on partners, including the United States, for wider insight”, the report said.
It said that the strengths of the Indian digital economy include a vibrant start-up culture and a very large talent pool. “The private sector has moved more quickly than the government in promoting national cyber security.”
The country is active and visible in cyber diplomacy but has not been among the leaders on global norms, preferring instead to make productive practical arrangements with key states, the report said.
“India is a third-tier cyber power whose best chance of progressing to the second tier is by harnessing its great digital-industrial potential and adopting a whole-of-society approach to improving its cyber security,” the report said.
The report also assessed China’s cyber power as clearly inferior to that of the US, and substantially below the combined cyber power of the US network of alliances.
The countries covered in this report are US, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia (four of the Five Eyes intelligence allies); France and Israel (the two most cyber-capable partners of the Five Eyes states); Japan (also an ally of the Five Eyes states, but less capable in the security dimensions of cyberspace, despite its formidable economic power); China, Russia, Iran and North Korea (the principal states posing a cyber threat to Western interests); and India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam (four countries at earlier stages in their cyber-power development). It is an ongoing study, which will cover a total of 40 countries, including Germany, Singapore, Nigeria among others.
India has been put in the third tier meant for countries that have strengths or potential strengths in some of these categories but “significant weaknesses” in others. Also in this category are: Japan, Iran, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and North Korea.
In the second tier, with world-leading strengths in “some” categories are: Australia, Canada, China, France, Israel, Russia and the United Kingdom.
London-based THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES
https://www.iiss.org/blogs/research-paper/2021/06/cyber-capabilities-national-power
India has frequently been the victim of cyber attacks, including on its critical infrastructure, and has attributed a significant proportion of them to China or Pakistan. CERT-In reported, for example, that there were more than 394,499 incidents in 2019,44 and 2020 saw an upsurge in attacks from China.45 Of particular concern to the Indian government are cyber attacks by North Korea that use Chinese digital infrastructure.46 The vast major- ity of the cyber incidents flagged by CERT-In appear to have been attempts at espionage,47 but they could also have resulted in serious damage to the integrity of
Indian networks and platforms. In 2020, India had the second-highest incidence of ransomware attacks in the world48 and the government banned 117 Chinese mobile applications because of security concerns.49
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Public statements by Indian officials and other open- source material indicate that India has developed rela- tively advanced offensive cyber capabilities focused on Pakistan. It is now in the process of expanding these capabilities for wider effect.
India reportedly considered a cyber response against Pakistan in the aftermath of the November 2008 terror- ist attacks in Mumbai, with the NTRO apparently at the forefront of deliberations.67 A former national security advisor has since indicated publicly that India pos- sesses considerable capacity to conduct cyber-sabotage operations against Pakistan,68 which appears credible
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Overall, India’s focus on Pakistan will have given it useful operational experience and some viable regional offensive cyber capabilities. It will need to expand its cyber-intelligence reach to be able to deliver sophisti- cated offensive effect further afield, but its close collab- oration with international partners, especially the US, will help it in that regard.
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Raj Chengappa and Sandeep Unnithan, ‘How to Punish Pakistan’, India Today, 22 September 2016, https://www. indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/20161003-uri- attack-narendra-modi-pakistan-terror-kashmir-nawaz-sharif- india-vajpayee-829603-2016-09-22.
https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/pakistan-linked-hackers-targeted-indian.html
A threat actor with suspected ties to Pakistan has been striking government and energy organizations in the South and Central Asia regions to deploy a remote access trojan on compromised Windows systems, according to new research.
"Most of the organizations that exhibited signs of compromise were in India, and a small number were in Afghanistan," Lumen's Black Lotus Labs said in a Tuesday analysis. "The potentially compromised victims aligned with the government and power utility verticals."
Some of the victims include a foreign government organization, a power transmission organization, and a power generation and transmission organization. The covert operation is said to have begun at least in January 2021.
The intrusions are notable for a number of reasons, not least because in addition to its highly-targeted nature, the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) adopted by the adversary rely on repurposed open-source code and the use of compromised domains in the same country as the targeted entity to host their malicious files.
At the same time, the group has been careful to hide their activity by modifying the registry keys, granting them the ability to surreptitiously maintain persistence on the target device without attracting attention.
Explaining the multi-step infection chain, Lumen noted the campaign "resulted in the victim downloading two agents; one resided in-memory, while the second was side-loaded, granting threat actor persistence on the infected workstations."
The attack commences with a malicious link sent via phishing emails or messages that, when clicked, downloads a ZIP archive file containing a Microsoft shortcut file (.lnk) and a decoy PDF file from a compromised domain.
The shortcut file, besides displaying the benign document to the unsuspecting recipient, also takes care of stealthily fetching and running an HTA (HTML application) file from the same compromised website.
The lure documents largely describe events catering to India, disguising as a user manual for registering and booking an appointment for COVID-19 vaccine through the CoWIN online portal, while a few others masquerade as the Bombay Sappers, a regiment of the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army.
Pakistan plans to set up international media channel funded by China to build narrative: Report (India Today) The leaked documents that Indian agencies have laid their hands on from Pakistan's security establishment show that Pakistan wants to collaborate with China to carry out an information war campaign globally, with Beijing providing finances and guidance.
https://thecyberwire.com/newsletters/daily-briefing/10/118
The leaked documents that Indian agencies have laid their hands on from Pakistan's security establishment show that Pakistan wants to collaborate with China to carry out an information war campaign globally, with Beijing providing finances and guidance.
The concept paper, reviewed by India Today, is titled ‘Building capacity to contest inimical narratives through counter on alternative narratives.’
The paper says the projects looks at truth and factual aspects with a view to quashing misperception.
Internal dynamics in Pakistan are favourable for open media but financial challenges are a hurdle, the paper says while justifying the need to team up with China.
“There is a need for a media house of the stature of Al Jazeera and RT to propel amenable narrative. A media house by Pakistan and funded by China will achieve the stipulated objectives,” the document states.
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/pakistan-china-international-media-channel-1816998-2021-06-19
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/tech-news/.premium-india-s-gandhi-and-pakistan-s-khan-tapped-as-israeli-nso-spyware-targets-1.10012729
Prominent Indian politician Rahul Gandhi and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan were selected as potential targets of the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware program by clients of the NSO Group cyberespionage firm, a global investigation can reveal Monday.
Additional potential targets included Pakistani officials, including a number once associated with Pakistani leader Khan. They also included Kashmiri separatists, leading Tibetan religious figures and even an Indian supreme court judge. Khan did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Post.
Gandhi, who said he changes phones every few months to avoid being hacked, said in response: “Targeted surveillance of the type you describe, whether in regard to me, other leaders of the opposition or indeed any law-abiding citizen of India, is illegal and deplorable.
According to an analysis of the Pegasus Project records, more than 180 journalists were selected in 21 countries by at least 12 NSO clients. The potential targets and clients hail from Bahrain, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, India, Mexico, Hungary, Azerbaijan, Togo and Rwanda.
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India is Israel’s biggest arms market, buying around $1 billion worth of weapons every year, according to Reuters. The two countries have grown closer since Modi became Indian prime minister in 2014, widening commercial cooperation beyond their longstanding defense ties. Modi became the first sitting Indian leader to visit Israel in July 2017, while former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a state visit to India at the start of 2018
Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence operations, are selling services once conducted principally by intelligence agencies.
They sow discord, meddle in elections, seed false narratives and push viral conspiracies, mostly on social media. And they offer clients something precious: deniability.
“Disinfo-for-hire actors being employed by government or government-adjacent actors is growing and serious,” said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, calling it “a boom industry.”
Similar campaigns have been recently found promoting India’s ruling party, Egyptian foreign policy aims and political figures in Bolivia and Venezuela.
Mr. Brookie’s organization tracked one operating amid a mayoral race in Serra, a small city in Brazil. An ideologically promiscuous Ukrainian firm boosted several competing political parties.
In India, dozens of government-run Twitter accounts have shared posts from India Vs Disinformation, a website and set of social media feeds that purport to fact-check news stories on India.
India Vs Disinformation is, in reality, the product of a Canadian communications firm called Press Monitor.
Nearly all the posts seek to discredit or muddy reports unfavorable to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, including on the country’s severe Covid-19 toll. An associated site promotes pro-Modi narratives under the guise of news articles.
A Digital Forensic Research Lab report investigating the network called it “an important case study” in the rise of “disinformation campaigns in democracies.”
A representative of Press Monitor, who would identify himself only as Abhay, called the report completely false.
He specified only that it incorrectly identified his firm as Canada-based. Asked why the company lists a Toronto address, a Canadian tax registration and identifies as “part of Toronto’s thriving tech ecosystem,” or why he had been reached on a Toronto phone number, he said that he had business in many countries. He did not respond to an email asking for clarification.
A LinkedIn profile for Abhay Aggarwal identifies him as the Toronto-based chief executive of Press Monitor and says that the company’s services are used by the Indian government.
A set of pro-Beijing operations hint at the field’s capacity for rapid evolution.
Since 2019, Graphika, a digital research firm, has tracked a network it nicknamed “Spamouflage” for its early reliance on spamming social platforms with content echoing Beijing’s line on geopolitical issues. Most posts received little or no engagement.
In recent months, however, the network has developed hundreds of accounts with elaborate personas. Each has its own profile and posting history that can seem authentic. They appeared to come from many different countries and walks of life.
Graphika traced the accounts back to a Bangladeshi content farm that created them in bulk and probably sold them to a third party.
The network pushes strident criticism of Hong Kong democracy activists and American foreign policy. By coordinating without seeming to, it created an appearance of organic shifts in public opinion — and often won attention.
The accounts were amplified by a major media network in Panama, prominent politicians in Pakistan and Chile, Chinese-language YouTube pages, the left-wing British commentator George Galloway and a number of Chinese diplomatic accounts.
A separate pro-Beijing network, uncovered by a Taiwanese investigative outlet called The Reporter, operated hundreds of Chinese-language websites and social media accounts.
"We can keep making messages go viral, whether they are real or fake, sweet or sour," the BJP president boasted.
https://thewire.in/politics/amit-shah-bjp-fake-social-media-messages
“In the elections that took place in Uttar Pradesh a year ago, BJP’s social media workers made two big WhatsApp groups. One had 15 lakhmembers, the other 17 lakh. This means a total of 31 lakh. And every day at 8 am they would send ‘Know the Truth’. In which the truth about all the false stories printed in the newspapers about the BJP was given via WhatsApp, and it would go viral. And whichever paper had carried these stories, ordinary people, and social media, would get after them, that why have you printed lies, you should print the truth. And by doing this, slowly, the media became neutral.
“But we had a volunteer who was smart. As I said, messages go from bottom to top and and top to bottom. He put a message in the group – that Akhilesh Yadav had slapped Mulayam Singh. No such thing had happened. Mulayam and Akhilesh were 600 km apart. But he put this message. And the social media team spread it. It spread everywhere. By 10 that day my phone started ringing, bhaisahab, did you know Akhilesh slapped Mulayam…. So the message went viral. One should not do such things. But in a way he created a certain mahaul (perception). This is something worth doing but don’t do it! (Crowd laughs) Do you understand what I am saying?This is something worth doing but don’t do it! We can do good things too. We are capable of delivering any message we want to the public, whether sweet or sour, true of fake. We can do this work only because we have 32 lakh people in our WhatsApp groups. That is how we were able to make this viral.”
Media Monitoring, Public Relations, Digital Marketing, Content, Infographics, Video, Web and Mobile Apps Development
Toronto, Ontario, Canada Contact info
Press Monitor
https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhay-aggarwal/?originalSubdomain=ca
Press Monitor is India's leading media monitoring service.
Press Monitor services are used by President of India, Prime Minister of India, all the ministries of the Indian government, all Indian embassies worldwide, statutory bodies, regulatory bodies, public sector undertakings, multinational companies and Indian enterprises.
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Abhay Aggarwal
Media Monitoring, Public Relations, Digital Marketing, Content, Infographics, Video, Web and Mobile Apps Development
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Nearly 24 years experience in dealing with senior executives and business leaders. Two decades experience involving application of mind and discretion.
Strong understanding of business issues at national and international level. Daily interaction with news over 24 years.
Ability to lead complex projects from concept to fully operational status. Have handled projects in the UK, India and working closely with the government of Seychelles.
Goal-oriented individual with strong leadership capabilities. Managing team of 60 people with very little staff turnover. Many employees have stayed for more than 10 years.
Ability to do business in an international environment cutting across geographies, ethnic backgrounds, and languages.
Specialties: Business representation in the UK, News Aggregation Services, Web-based application development
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Abhay Aggarwal
Media Monitoring, Public Relations, Digital Marketing, Content, Infographics, Video, Web and Mobile Apps Development
More
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Abhay Aggarwal
Abhay Aggarwal 3rd degree connection3rd
Media Monitoring, Public Relations, Digital Marketing, Content, Infographics, Video, Web and Mobile Apps Development
Toronto, Ontario, Canada Contact info
Press Monitor
500+ connections
--
Nearly 24 years experience in dealing with senior executives and business leaders. Two decades experience involving application of mind and discretion.
Strong understanding of business issues at national and international level. Daily interaction with news over 24 years.
Ability to lead complex projects from concept to fully operational status. Have handled projects in the UK, India and working closely with the government of Seychelles.
Goal-oriented individual with strong leadership capabilities. Managing team of 60 people with very little staff turnover. Many employees have stayed for more than 10 years.
Ability to do business in an international environment cutting across geographies, ethnic backgrounds, and languages.
Specialties: Business representation in the UK, News Aggregation Services, Web-based application development
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An Analysis of a Pro-Indian Army Covert Influence Operation on Twitter
https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/india-twitter-takedown
On August 24, 2022, Twitter shared 15 datasets of information operations it identified and removed from the platform with researchers in the Twitter Moderation Research Consortium for independent analysis. One of these datasets included 1,198 accounts that tweeted about India and Pakistan. Twitter suspended the network for violating their Platform Manipulation and Spam Policy, and said that the presumptive country of origin was India. Our report builds on a report on this same network by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
The network tweeted primarily in English, but also in Hindi and Urdu. Accounts claimed to be proud Kashmiris and relatives of Indian soldiers. Tweets praised the Indian Army’s military successes and provision of services in India-administered Kashmir and criticized the militaries of China and Pakistan. Two accounts existed to target specific individuals who were perceived as enemies of the Indian government.
Twitter is not publicly attributing this network to any actor, and the open source evidence did not allow us to make any independent attribution. In the report, however, we highlight some noteworthy articles in the Indian press. These articles show that Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have previously temporarily suspended the official accounts for the Chinar Corps. The Chinar Corps is a branch of the Indian army that operates in Kashmir. One article, citing Army officials as its source, says that the Facebook and Instagram accounts were suspended for "coordinated inauthentic behavior." Our report also notes that the content of the Twitter network is consistent with the Chinar Corps’ objectives, praising the work of the Indian Army in India-occupied Kashmir, and that the official Chinar Corps Twitter account is one of the most mentioned or retweeted account in the network.
The purpose of the Twitter accounts in the network was to praise the Indian Army for their "military successes" and "provision of humanitarian services in India-administered Kashmir".
https://twitter.com/stanfordio/status/1572627130449821697?s=20&t=pvTw90fcd7d848Nk8iWawQ
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/us-report-unearths-indian-army-propaganda-campaign/
Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) recently published a report analyzing a pro-Indian Army propaganda campaign on social media.
To clarify, the Stanford Internet Observatory is a program of the Cyber Policy Center which is a joint initiative of the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies and the prestigious Stanford Law School in the US.
The report titled “My Heart Belongs to Kashmir: An Analysis of a Pro-Indian Army Covert Influence Operation on Twitter” takes note of a Twitter network that was recently suspended and concludes that the network was consistent with the Chinar Corps.
To clarify, the Chinar Corps is a Corps of the Indian Army that is presently located in Srinagar and responsible for military operations in the Kashmir Valley. Chinar Corps also has social media accounts where it consistently promotes a positive image of the Indian Army despite its internationally recognized human rights violations in Kashmir. Moreover, the social media accounts of Chinar Corps were suspended and blocked for short periods of time on multiple occasions for “coordinated inauthentic activity”.
Last month, Twitter identified a network of over 1000 accounts that tweeted about India and Pakistan. Twitter suspended the network for violating its Platform Manipulation and Spam Policy and said that the presumptive country of origin was India.
Indian propaganda?
The SIO report notes that while the network was not attributed to any actor or organization, there were many similarities to the Chinar Corps.
“The content of the Twitter network is consistent with the Chinar Corps’ objectives, praising the work of the Indian Army in India-occupied Kashmir,” the SIO report states.
The network was made up of several Twitter accounts posing as fake Kashmiris with images taken from elsewhere on the internet, for instance, Getty Stock Images.
“Tweets tagging journalists aimed either to bring events to the attention of reporters or to bring the reporter to the attention of followers—often in an apparent attempt to target the reporter for what was framed as anti-India content,” the report further revealed.
Moreover, the purpose of the Twitter accounts in the network was to praise the Indian Army for their “military successes” and “provision of humanitarian services in India-administered Kashmir”. The accounts also criticized Pakistan and China who are rivals of India.
Pro-Indian Army Covert Influence Operation on
Twitter
Shelby Grossman, Emily Tianshi, David Thiel, and Renée DiResta
Stanford Internet Observatory
September 21, 2022
https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:zs105tw7107/20220921%20India%20takedown.pdf
Chronology
June 6, 2019 Twitter suspends Chinar Corps account
June 7, 2019 Twitter reinstates Chinar Corps account
January 28, 2022 Facebook Page and Instagram account for
Chinar Corps suspended
January 31, 2022 Oldest visible Chinar Corps tweet, despite
account created in 2017
February 9 and/or 10, 2022 Facebook Page and Instagram account for
Chinar Corps reinstated
March 29, 2022 Last visible tweet from Twitter takedown
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There were two accounts in the network that existed to target reporters, activists,
and politicians in this way. The accounts had similar usernames and tweets:
@KashmirTraitors (created in July 2020, with a bio that said “Busting fake news,
bringing you the real truth of Kashmir”), and @KashmirTraitor1 (created in
January 2022, with a bio that said “Exposing the traitors who call them #Kashmiri
but are working towards destroying #Kashmiriyat....!!!!!”, see Figure 6 on the
following page). The @KashmirTraitors bio linked to a YouTube channel, Traitors
of Kashmir, created in 2014. The Twitter accounts and YouTube channel targeted
specific individuals, focusing on what the account deemed “anti-India” journalists,
calling reporters “#whitecollarterrorist,” for example; saying that they were
working to corrupt the minds of Kashmiris; and accusing them of taking money
from Pakistan. The accounts also targeted activists. One @KashmirTraitor1
thread, for example, targeted the activist and author Pieter Friedrich (see Figure 7
on page 8).
These two Kashmir Traitor accounts also targeted the Pakistani government. One
@KashmirTraitors tweet said:
“#ISPR has raised an #astonishing network of 4000-strong highly
qualified #Information Warfare specialists during the past decade
through a carefully crafted internship program that is directly run by
#ISI”
ISPR stands for Inter-Services Public Relations, the Pakistani military’s media
arm. ISI stands for Inter-Services Intelligence, a Pakistani intelligence agency.
The tweet was accompanied by the image shown in Figure 8 on page 8.
Almost 400 tweets from @KashmirTraitors received at least 500 likes. Its most
popular tweet targeted journalist Fahad Shah, who has been imprisoned since
March 2022. The tweet, from January 17, 2021, said:
“#FahadShah unveiled #thread (1/n) Fahad is the founder and editor
of the #Kashmir Walla magazine and claims himself an freelance
journalist on the other hand rigorously publishes content on anti-
#India sentiments. Mr #Fahad how can you call yourself independent
journalist?”
The tweet got 2,440 likes. In calling out particular individuals, @KashmirTraitors
would sometimes tag the official Chinar Corps account, @ChinarcorpsIA, to draw
their attention to a thread.
The move comes after Twitter and Facebook shut down misleading accounts that they determined were sending messages to promote U.S. foreign policy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/us/politics/pentagon-social-media.html
WASHINGTON — White House officials told the military that they were concerned about its efforts to spread pro-American messaging on social media, prompting the Pentagon to order a review of secretive operations to influence populations overseas, U.S. officials said.
The review follows a decision by Twitter and Facebook over the summer to shut down misleading accounts that they determined were sending messages about U.S. foreign policy interests abroad.
The Pentagon audit and White House concerns were first reported by The Washington Post.
Disinformation researchers said the campaigns largely fell into two camps. Most of the campaigns spread pro-American messages, including memes and slogans that praised the United States. Those programs were similar to how Beijing often spreads disinformation by seeding positive messages about life in China.
One campaign targeting Iran, however, spread divisive messages about life there. The accounts involved pushed out views that both supported and opposed the Iranian government. That disinformation effort resembled the methods used by Russia to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
For years U.S. military commands have promoted pro-American news and messages for audiences overseas, sometimes earning the scrutiny of Congress. But the decision by the social media companies to shut down some accounts associated with the military suggested that the activity had gone further.
Twitter and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, removed accounts that they said violated their terms of service by taking part in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”
A report in August by Stanford University’s Internet Observatory and the social media analytics firm Graphika said those accounts were pushing pro-American messages in the Middle East and Central Asia. The two groups attributed some of the accounts taken down by Facebook and Twitter to the Trans-Regional Web Initiative, a more than 10-year-old Pentagon initiative that sends out information in support of the United States in areas where the U.S. military operates.
The postings varied widely in sophistication. Some of the more polished work was aimed at Twitter and Telegram users in Iran and pushed a wide variety of views. While most of the messages were critical of the Iranian government, researchers said others were supportive of it, the kind of activity that could potentially be designed to inflame debate and sow divisions in the country.
Calling it "propaganda" and a "vulgar movie", Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, who headed the IFFI jury, said "all of them" were "disturbed and shocked" to see the film screened at the festival.
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/film-festival-iffi-jury-head-calls-the-kashmir-files-vulgar-propaganda-3560980
New Delhi: The jury of 53rd International Film Festival in Goa has slammed the controversial movie "The Kashmir Files", which revolves around the killings and exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990 from Kashmir Valley. Calling it "propaganda" and a "vulgar movie", Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, who headed the IFFI jury, said "all of them" were "disturbed and shocked" to see the film screened at the festival.
"It seemed to us like a propagandist movie inappropriate for an artistic, competitive section of such a prestigious film festival. I feel totally comfortable to share openly these feelings here with you on stage. Since the spirit of having a festival is to accept also a critical discussion which is essential for art and for life," Mr Lapid said in his address.
The Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty and Pallavi Joshi starrer, directed by Vivek Agnihotri, was featured in the "Panorama" section of the festival last week.
The film has been praised by the BJP and has been declared tax-free in most BJP-ruled states and was a box office hit. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah have praised on the movie.
Many, however, have criticised the content, calling it a one-sided portrayal of the events that is sometimes factually incorrect and claiming the movie has a "propagandist tone".
In May, Singapore banned the movie, citing concerns over its "potential to cause enmity between different communities".
"The film will be refused classification for its provocative and one-sided portrayal of Muslims and the depictions of Hindus being persecuted in the ongoing conflict in Kashmir," read a statement from the Singapore government, reported news agency Press Trust of India.
Mr Agnihotri has alleged an "international political campaign" against him and his film by foreign media.
He claimed this was the reason his press conference was cancelled by the Foreign Correspondents Club and the Press Club of India in May.
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-how-did-india-become-a-fake-news-hot-spot/video-62770787
Low digital literacy, political and religious biases, as well as the functionality of social media platforms, have turned India into a hub for fake news. But how can this be countered?
@zoo_bear
Media outlets including ANI shared the photo of a padlocked grave with the claim that parents in Pakistan were locking daughters' graves to avoid rape. The photo is from Hyderabad, India and the grave is reportedly of an aged woman.
https://twitter.com/zoo_bear/status/1652688083593330688?s=20
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The image of a padlocked grave has gone viral. In media reports and social media posts, it is being linked to rising necrophilia cases in Pakistan, with the claim that the image is an example of how mothers lock their daughters’ graves in Pakistan in order to prevent rape.
ANI Digital tweeted the image with the above claim. In their article titled ‘Pakistani parents lock daughters’ graves to avoid rape’, they cited a Daily Times article to report that parents in Pakistan guarded their dead daughters against rape by putting padlocks on their graves. The viral picture has been used in the ANI article with the caption, ‘Pakistani parents locking up graves of daughters to protect their dead bodies from getting raped’ and they have credited Twitter for the image. (Archive)
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Media misreport: Viral photo of grave with iron grille is from Hyderabad, not Pakistan
https://www.altnews.in/media-misreport-viral-photo-of-grave-with-iron-grille-is-from-hyderabad-not-pakistan/