Russia Is Learning How to Bypass Facebook's Disinfo Defenses by captaincrunch

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Russia Is Learning How to Bypass Facebook's Disinfo Defenses

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Saturday, March 7, 2020 11:10
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Thursday, March 5, 2020 9:17 AM

... stay crunchy...

Amazing! Russia still wants to influence our presidential election! They must have skin in the game...

https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ira-bypass-facebook-disinfo-defense
s/

Social media platforms have stepped up the fight against Russia's Internet Research Agency—but the IRA is evolving too.

Since Russia’s stunning influence operations during the 2016 United States presidential race, state and federal officials, researchers, and tech companies have been on high alert for a repeat performance. With the 2020 election now just seven months away, though, newly surfaced social media posts indicate that Russia’s Internet Research Agency is adapting its methods to circumvent those defenses.

In September, University of Wisconsin researcher Young Mie Kim started analyzing posts on Facebook and Instagram from 32 accounts connected to the IRA. Within weeks, Facebook announced page, group, and account takedowns related to Iranian and Russian disinformation efforts in October. And accompanying research from the social media analysis firm Graphika corroborated that 31 of the 32 accounts Kim had been observing were Russia-linked. But Kim's findings, detailed for the first time today, reveal additional details about how the IRA has evolved its tactics—and how it may be continuing to do so.

“Despite the increased transparency measures by top platforms it looks like the Russians are taking advantage of loopholes to try and circumvent the tech platforms’ defenses,” Kim told WIRED. “They’ve improved their mimicry behaviors and because of their evolving tactics it’s increasingly more difficult to detect these foreign actors. So I think we should be very wary of that.”

Ahead of the 2016 election, the IRA built up pages with massive followings that often invented personas or grassroots organizations—complete with logos and other marketing material. As digital platforms began scanning for international indicators of what Facebook calls “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” though, the IRA seems to have changed gears. The posts Kim analyzed in September were more focused on impersonating real, domestic US organizations or claiming a connection to them, seemingly to borrow legitimacy and hide in plain sight.

One post from a racially charged Instagram account called "iowa.patriot" posted an anti-Elizabeth Warren meme in August that said, "If white privilege existed, why did Elizabeth Warren have to spend decades lying about her ethnicity to get ahead?" Beneath the words was a banner logo taken from a US advocacy group. (Kim redacted references to real people and organizations). In July, the same account also posted a map of the US made of bacon titled "Sharia Free Zone."

The accounts Kim looked at mainly targeted battleground states like Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

The IRA focused most of its content on the same divisive issues as 2016, like racial identity, anti-immigration and anti-Muslim sentiment, nationalism, patriotism, religious topics, and gun rights. And similar to 2016, Kim noticed campaigns promoting a range of ideological views. But she also saw evolutions to stay current, like an increase in tailored feminist and anti-feminist content.

For example, an Instagram account called "feminist_agenda_" posted an illustration in September depicting disembodied hands with different skin tones giving the middle finger under the words, "if your feminism doesn't include queer, black, poor, disabled, trans and muslim women, its not feminism. #womensmarch"

Kim noticed another pivot on commerce pages. In 2016, the IRA set up some accounts that claimed to sell items like t-shirts emblazoned with political lines and slogans. But in September, she instead saw evidence of Russia-owned commerce pages hawking benign, neutral items. Instead of directly conducting influence operations through merchandise, the IRA seemed to be using the commerce pages as a way to legitimize and promote their other accounts and posts.

Facebook's October takedown initiative indicates that even as the IRA evolves its tactics, the platform can still eventually spot many of its nefarious campaigns. And the company said in October that the most novel thing about the network it took down was an expanded effort to conceal Russian links to the accounts themselves. But Facebook also acknowledged in July 2018 the challenges it faces staying ahead of the curve.

“We're glad to see researchers do further analysis on our past takedowns,” a Facebook company spokesperson said in a statement. “Last October, we removed this Russia-linked network, which appeared to be in its early stages using tactics we've observed before. We will keep evolving our defenses and announcing these foreign influence campaigns, as we did more than 50 times last year."

As good as the IRA has gotten at avoiding detection, those same steps make it harder for its accounts to stand out and gain followers. Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at Graphika, notes that by making their posts and personas more generic and homespun for the US audience, Russian trolls have limited their own reach.

“What would always give them away was bad English," Nimmo says. "So what we saw in October was they started copy/pasting an awful lot of their content from online sources or blogs or Wikipedia. On Instagram a lot of what they were posting were things like screenshots of tweets from real Americans to blend in. But the big difference was before they had real personalities, they were snarky, they were really good at the internet. When you're copying someone else there's no personality. They created generic flat personalities, so almost all of the accounts had a much lower following."

Nimmo also echoes Facebook’s point that part of the IRA’s effort to be more inconspicuous involved operational security improvements like connecting accounts to VoIP phone numbers, routing payments through the US, and masking the origin of web traffic.

Neither Kim nor Nimmo would speculate about what the IRA has been up to since October. Both say that the agency's influence operations are likely ongoing in some capacity, given past precedent and comments from US officials. But Nimmo points out that the October takedowns likely set the IRA back.

“If you have a bunch of assets that have been disrupted the first thing you have to do is rebuild an audience. They have to grow their audience slowly enough that they don’t get noticed, but quickly enough that they have it in place in advance of Election Day,” he says. “The logical thing for them to do would be to try to work out how they got caught and try and work out what they can do differently.”

US officials see foreign meddling as an active threat leading up to Election Day and have warned both Congress and the public repeatedly about the risk. But when it came to Super Tuesday at least, the Department of Homeland Security said this week that it did not see a significant surge in election-related disinformation across digital platforms. Kim cautions, though, that more sophisticated tactics could still be slipping past social media platforms’ defenses every day.

“We have to think about the general approach the tech platforms are taking right now,” she says. “They’re basically fighting against foreign actors, but when the line between foreign and domestic is blurred it’s really difficult to enforce that rule.”

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Thursday, March 5, 2020 10:46 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

OH NOEZ!!!!

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Thursday, March 5, 2020 2:26 PM

JONGSSTRAW

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

OH NOEZ!!!!

Do Right, Be Right. :)

Oh noez is right! Time for another 3-year-waste-of-taxpayer-money investigation! What's Robert Mueller doing these days? Who knows, this time he might actually find ONE example of Russian collusion/influence/vote tampering. Actually, I believe Stormy's lawyer Michael Avenatti could do a better job … right from his prison cell.

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Friday, March 6, 2020 12:36 PM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

OH NOEZ!!!!

Oh noez is right! Time for another 3-year-waste-of-taxpayer-money investigation! What's Robert Mueller doing these days? Who knows, this time he might actually find ONE example of Russian collusion/influence/vote tampering. Actually, I believe Stormy's lawyer Michael Avenatti could do a better job … right from his prison cell.

First time I saw Avenatti I took him for a Trump stooge - he has/had the same salesman swagger and line of BS. Maybe he's got some room in his cell for Trump?

Breaking News: Trump's a lying sack of sh*t.

Another Republican clown:

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz wears gas mask during vote to address new coronavirus
Just before the vote, Gaetz referred to the House floor as a "Petri dish."

The Reps have tried to scrub the Internet where they can, even Fox removed the image from their own article:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/matt-gaetz-gas-mask-coronavirus-bill

I suppose that's just another "win?"

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Friday, March 6, 2020 12:53 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"Russia Is Learning How to Bypass Facebook's Disinfo Defenses"

Why anybody would think Facebook is a place to find anything at all worthwhile is beyond me.

I bet you're on it all the time, Crunchy!

Belief is for wimps and mental midgets!

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Friday, March 6, 2020 1:05 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

No shit. Stay offa Faceplant and you'll be fine.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!

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Friday, March 6, 2020 1:07 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Yup. Good thing I don't use Facebook.

There's probably at least a dozen, or maybe even over 100 better reasons why you shouldn't be using it either.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, March 6, 2020 3:02 PM

THG

Everything changes with the November elections G. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

T

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

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Friday, March 6, 2020 4:00 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Everything changes with the November elections G. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

T

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

lol. You really think the Democrats have a shot, huh?

I can't wait to gloat once the Debates start and Biden forgets where he is and why that mean old man is making him feel bad.

Dude can't even get Obama's endorsement.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, March 6, 2020 5:23 PM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
"Russia Is Learning How to Bypass Facebook's Disinfo Defenses"

Why anybody would think Facebook is a place to find anything at all worthwhile is beyond me.

I bet you're on it all the time, Crunchy!

Don't have a FB account, and never have. Thing is, many Trumptards do - they are an especially stupid lot. And that's why Trump and Putin spend so much money there - you understand that? They do.

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Friday, March 6, 2020 5:27 PM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
No shit. Stay offa Faceplant and you'll be fine.

Heh - that's just like saying: "don't listen to Signoramous and you'll be fine."

58% of Americans and their mothers are on Facebook. You're worthless suggestion confirms just what a lying or stupid @ss you are.

BTW - Tulsi got 2 delegates!

dd no one liste

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Friday, March 6, 2020 5:28 PM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Yup. Good thing I don't use Facebook.

There's probably at least a dozen, or maybe even over 100 better reasons why you shouldn't be using it either.

You don't use Facebook because no one on this planet wants to talk to you.

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Friday, March 6, 2020 5:39 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Quote:
Don't have a FB account, and never have. Thing is, many Trumptards do - they are an especially stupid lot. And that's why Trump and Putin spend so much money there - you understand that? They do.

Quote:
58% of Americans and their mothers are on Facebook. You're worthless suggestion confirms just what a lying or stupid @ss you are.

OMG. You can't put 2 posts together without lying so badly you contradict yourself one right after the other.

Quote:
dd no one liste

??? Drooling again?

Propaganda is for wimps and mental midgets, like Crunchy!

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Friday, March 6, 2020 6:08 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Yup. Good thing I don't use Facebook.

There's probably at least a dozen, or maybe even over 100 better reasons why you shouldn't be using it either.

You don't use Facebook because no one on this planet wants to talk to you.

You're talking to me right now, dipshit.

How's that smartphone treating ya? Still doing all of your thinking for you?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, March 7, 2020 9:36 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Yup. Good thing I don't use Facebook.

There's probably at least a dozen, or maybe even over 100 better reasons why you shouldn't be using it either.

You don't use Facebook because no one on this planet wants to talk to you.

You're talking to me right now, dipshit.

Are we talking on Facebook right now, dumbf6ck?

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Saturday, March 7, 2020 9:42 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Quote:
Don't have a FB account, and never have. Thing is, many Trumptards do - they are an especially stupid lot. And that's why Trump and Putin spend so much money there - you understand that? They do.
Quote:
58% of Americans and their mothers are on Facebook. You're worthless suggestion confirms just what a lying or stupid @ss you are.
OMG. You can't put 2 posts together without lying so badly you contradict yourself one right after the other.

Your sentence structure, like your logic, is sh*t is the point. It's possible for someone - like you - to contradict themselves without lying, or even lie without contradicting themselves. Your understanding of simple concepts is missing altogether.

But do elucidate if you can - where's the contradiction or lie?

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Saturday, March 7, 2020 11:08 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Yup. Good thing I don't use Facebook.

There's probably at least a dozen, or maybe even over 100 better reasons why you shouldn't be using it either.

You don't use Facebook because no one on this planet wants to talk to you.

You're talking to me right now, dipshit.

Are we talking on Facebook right now, dumbf6ck?

That's what the title of your stupid thread says, idiot.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, March 7, 2020 11:10 AM

THG

Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Quote:
Don't have a FB account, and never have. Thing is, many Trumptards do - they are an especially stupid lot. And that's why Trump and Putin spend so much money there - you understand that? They do.
Quote:
58% of Americans and their mothers are on Facebook. You're worthless suggestion confirms just what a lying or stupid @ss you are.
OMG. You can't put 2 posts together without lying so badly you contradict yourself one right after the other.

Your sentence structure, like your logic, is sh*t is the point. It's possible for someone - like you - to contradict themselves without lying, or even lie without contradicting themselves. Your understanding of simple concepts is missing altogether.

But do elucidate if you can - where's the contradiction or lie?

Damn russians...

T

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

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