Meta Takes Down ‘Covert Influence Operations’ in China, Russia

Meta today revealed how it identified and took down two “covert influence operations” emanating from China and Russia.

Both violated Meta’s policy(Opens in a new window) against Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB). China was the smaller of the two operations, focused mainly on targeting the US and the Czech Republic, and consisting of four short campaigns carried out between the Fall of 2021 and September 2022.

In the Czech Republic, anti-government posts were made criticizing the government’s actions regarding Ukraine, Russia, the economic impact that was having, and warnings not to upset China. For the US, both sides of politics were targeted ahead of the midterms.

The Chinese operation consisted of 81 Facebook accounts, eight Facebook Pages, two Instagram accounts, a Facebook Group, multiple Twitter accounts, and two Czech petition platforms. Meta discovered the network before it really had time to grow due to the posts all being made during working hours in China, which don’t match up with those of either target country.

The larger Russian operation targeted Germany, France, Italy, Ukraine, and the UK, and began in May. Unsurprisingly, the focus was on criticizing Ukraine, supporting Russia, and claiming Western sanctions were going to backfire. The network consisted of more than 60 websites impersonating legitimate news organizations such as Spiegel, The Guardian, and Bild.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Telegram were all used to promote the articles on these fake websites, as were YouTube videos and even some memes, with posts being made in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Ukrainian. Meta started its investigation after reports of the fake news activity was first reported in Germany. It later received help from the Digital Forensics Research Lab.

Meta admits, “this is the largest and most complex Russian-origin operation that we’ve disrupted since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.” When Meta blocked domains related to the operation, new websites were quickly setup to replace them by the operators. Meta refers to it as “an unusual combination of sophistication and brute force.”

With both networks now taken down, Meta has shared its findings in a CIB report(Opens in a new window). It’s hoped the report can, “help the security community detect and counter malicious activity elsewhere on the internet.” Meta also shared additional information with other tech companies, security researchers, governments, and law enforcement.

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