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Russian forces are trying to wipe Mariupol “from the face of the Earth”, says Ukrainian military commander



Facebook’s parent company Meta detailed Thursday a series of shady cyber tactics it says groups with ties to Russia and Belarus are using to target Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. .

Tactics the groups are using include posing as journalists and independent online news outlets to promote Russian discussions, attempting to hack dozens of Facebook accounts of Ukrainian soldiers and executing coordinated campaigns to try to remove posts by Russian critics from social networks, according to Meta.

A hacking group called “Ghostwriters,” which cyber experts believe has ties to Belarus, tried to break into the Facebook accounts of dozens of Ukrainian servicemen, the company said.

The hackers were successful in “a handful of cases,” Meta said, and “they posted videos calling for the Army to surrender as if these posts were coming from legitimate account owners. We’ve blocked sharing. share these videos”.

Meta also notes that the actions of groups with ties to the Russian and Belarusian governments appear to have increased shortly before the invasion occurred. The nation’s leaders fled the country on February 24, the day Russia started the war. ”

Meta also said it removed a network of about 200 active accounts from Russia that repeatedly submitted false reports about people in Ukraine and Russia in an attempt to remove them and their posts from the platform. These accounts frequently falsely reported to Meta that people in Ukraine and Russia violated the company’s rules on hate speech and other policies. This tactic, known as “bulk reporting,” is commonly used by people trying to close their opponents’ social media accounts.

Vadym Hudyma, co-founder at Digital Security Lab Ukraine, an organization that helps secure the online accounts of journalists and activists, said the Russian invasion has caused “a huge increase in the attacks on social media accounts through mass reporting”.

Many of the Twitter and Facebook accounts targeted were not verified, Hudyma told CNN, making it difficult for account recovery organizations such as fundraising and coordinating medical supplies to respond to the crisis. Russian invasion. “Many social media sites have been temporarily closed. We could have restored most of them pretty quickly. But it’s been a mess.”

Meta also said it continues to see the use of fake profile pictures in disinformation campaigns.

In an earlier announcement in February, Meta said it had discovered and shut down a covert Russian influence operation that operated accounts posing as Kyiv residents, including news editors. and targeted Ukrainians.

“They claim to be based in Kyiv and pose as a news editor, a former aeronautical engineer and the author of a scientific publication on hydrology – the science of water mapping,” said Meta. in a blog post.

It ties fake accounts to people previously sanctioned by the US government. According to data reviewed by CNN, the accounts and websites operated by this influence operation do not appear to be very successful in reaching many people.



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