Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cyberwarfare

Russia’s Disinformation Efforts Hit 39 Countries: Researchers

Russia’s campaign of cyberespionage and disinformation has targeted hundreds of individuals and organizations from at least 39 countries along with the United Nations and NATO, researchers said Thursday.

Russia’s campaign of cyberespionage and disinformation has targeted hundreds of individuals and organizations from at least 39 countries along with the United Nations and NATO, researchers said Thursday.

A report by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto revealed the existence of “a major disinformation and cyber espionage campaign with hundreds of targets in government, industry, military and civil society,” lead researcher Ronald Deibert said.

The findings suggest that the cyber attacks on the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton — which US intelligence officials have attributed to Russia — were just the tip of the iceberg.

Citizen Lab researchers said the espionage has targeted not only government, military and industry targets, but also journalists, academics, opposition figures, and activists,

Notable targets, according to the report, have included a former Russian prime minister, former high-ranking US officials, members of cabinets from Europe and Eurasia, ambassadors, high ranking military officers and chief executives of energy companies.

In a blog post, Deibert said the Russian-directed campaign follows a pattern of “phishing” attacks to obtain credentials of targets, and carefully “tainted” leaks that mix real and false information to create confusion around the true facts.

“Russia has a long history of experience with what is known as ‘dezinformatsiya,’ going back even to Soviet times,” Deibert said.

“Tainted leaks, such as those analyzed in our report, present complex challenges to the public.  Fake information scattered amongst genuine materials — ‘falsehoods in a forest of facts’… is very difficult to distinguish and counter, especially when it is presented as a salacious ‘leak’ integrated with what otherwise would be private information.”

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Deibert said the researchers had no “smoking gun” that links the campaign to a particular government agency but added that “our report nonetheless provides clear evidence of overlap with what has been publicly reported by numerous industry and government reports about Russian cyber espionage.”

Citizen Lab said one of the targets was US journalist David Satter, who has written extensively on corruption in Russia.

Satter’s stolen e-mails were “selectively modified,” and then “leaked” to give the false impression that he was part of a CIA-backed plot to discredit Russian President Vladimir Putin, the report said.

Similar leak campaigns targeted officials from Afghanistan, Armenia, Austria, Cambodia, Egypt, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Peru, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, according to the report.

UN officials and military personnel from more than a dozen countries were also targets, Citizen Lab said.

“Our hope is that in studying closely and publishing the details of such tainted leak operations, our report will help us better understand how to recognize and mitigate them,” Deibert said.

Written By

AFP 2023

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Understand how to go beyond effectively communicating new security strategies and recommendations.

Register

Join us for an in depth exploration of the critical nature of software and vendor supply chain security issues with a focus on understanding how attacks against identity infrastructure come with major cascading effects.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cyberwarfare

WASHINGTON - Cyberattacks are the most serious threat facing the United States, even more so than terrorism, according to American defense experts. Almost half...

Cyberwarfare

Russian espionage group Nomadic Octopus infiltrated a Tajikistani telecoms provider to spy on 18 entities, including government officials and public service infrastructures.

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Cyberwarfare

Several hacker groups have joined in on the Israel-Hamas war that started over the weekend after the militant group launched a major attack.

Application Security

Virtualization technology giant VMware on Tuesday shipped urgent updates to fix a trio of security problems in multiple software products, including a virtual machine...

Cybercrime

On the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, cybersecurity companies summarize the cyber operations they have seen and their impact.

Cyberwarfare

The war in Ukraine is the first major conflagration between two technologically advanced powers in the age of cyber. It prompts us to question...

Application Security

Fortinet on Monday issued an emergency patch to cover a severe vulnerability in its FortiOS SSL-VPN product, warning that hackers have already exploited the...