On creating disinformation - Omer Benjakob and Gur Megiddo in Haaretz:

‘“Thank you my love. It was a wonderful night. Waiting for you whenever you come back,” read the note attached to the sex toy hidden inside the Amazon delivery box. It was allegedly sent by Shannon Aiken, a 38-year-old Washington woman, to the home of a politician at the height of an election campaign. His wife received the package. The politician slept in his office for two days. A crew was secretly sent to film him there, and the embarrassing footage leaked online.
Aiken appears real. She is active on Facebook and Twitter, has a real Gmail account and an active WhatsApp, both linked to a real phone number. Her Amazon is connected to a credit card, while real funds from her digital wallet paid for the package purportedly containing a dildo, condoms and lubricants.
However, despite her impressive digital footprint, Aiken is not real. She is an avatar: a complex, fake digital persona built to mimic human behavior and avoid detection – not a bot, but a “cyborg.” It is impossible to know if her story is true. In one version we were told, the politician returned from a trip to the Gulf prior to receiving the package; in another, from Europe. But that is exactly the point.’

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‘This is the second story in a global investigation into the disinformation-for-hire industry. It was conducted as part of the Story Killers project led by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based consortium of international journalists who pursue the work of assassinated or threatened journalists.
An undercover investigation led by journalists from TheMarker, Radio France and Haaretz in Israel resulted in a series of meetings that were secretly recorded with Team Jorge – as they called themselves. Hanan (who called himself Jorge in our meetings) and Co. thought they were meeting with representatives of a potential client from an African country.
The clients’ goal: postponing the elections there, perhaps indefinitely, without cause. The price: 6 million euros (nearly $6.5 million).
Over the course of six meetings, held online and in person, the intermediaries – actually, three undercover reporters – were pitched by Team Jorge. The recorded materials were then investigated over six months by the project members, which included over 100 reporters worldwide from the likes of Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, The Guardian, Paper Trail Media, El Pais and the investigative journalist group OCCRP.’

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‘They take advantage of a known loophole in the international cellular network, in what experts say is a new, creative and disconcerting way. With the help of an official telecom provider – usually accessed through some nefarious backhanded local cooperation – and a little social engineering, they claim to be able to find almost any phone in the world and even intercept its data to gain access to many of its apps.
“It's $50,000 a number,” Zohar Hanan said during our last meeting, admitting the group also offers general hacking-for-hire services. He suggested different methods for payment, but his brother shouted out from his office: “Crypto! Crypto!”’

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‘There are many types of attack offered as part of Team Jorge’s “disruption” services – but their underlying goal is nearly always concerned with lowering turnout, casting doubt on potentially negative results and generally undermining trust in the democratic process.
These attacks are “evidence of the bleeding of state-sponsored tactics of cyberwarfare into the hands of for-hire cybermercenaries,” said Dr. Nir Grinberg, an assistant professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er Sheva. He previously published one of the definitive studies about disinformation on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“The outsourcing of disinformation campaigns is a new concept,” he said – specifically “the bundling of cybercrime capabilities for manufacturing an alternative reality with an elaborate apparatus to promote this disinformation online.”’

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‘“What is fake news?” Hanan asked rhetorically during one meeting. “Fake news is when people do believe it. Not because it’s reality or not reality. The question is credibility.” And Hanan has the necessary tools to create and manipulate credibility.
A mass avatar management system, AIMS allows for real accounts to be created for nonexistent people. These can then be deployed either as a swarm – similar to a network of bots – or as single agents.
“Let’s make one together,” Hanan said enthusiastically, opening AIMS’ “Create Profiles Wizard” – an interface that creates new avatars per a client’s needs.
With one click, AIMS generates a new name, ethnicity, nationality, language, hometown and more for the new avatar, based on the campaign’s location or needs. After picking a name, AIMS then offers an entire set of photos for use.
Hanan created a new avatar for us: a woman from the United Kingdom. He did not like the generic British name his system initially provided, so hit a button and generated a new name: “Sophia Wilde – I like the name.” Her photos, this investigation found, belong to a real woman who had no idea her likeness was being used to demo influence operations.’

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‘“These are technologies and skills that have never been seen from the inside,” said Prof. Anat Ben-David, a digital media researcher at the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communications at the Israeli Open University. (At the reporters' request, she reviewed the footage from the Team Jorge presentations.) The disinformation researcher added that this was the “first time we are seeing a disinformation system's interface from the inside.” How many avatars would you need to postpone an election in Africa without good cause, Hanan asked rhetorically. “Do we need 10,000? No, we need about 1,000,” he responded. Half, he added, could be “virgin” – an industry term for new avatars, created just for us – and half could be preexisting avatars, depending on “how much inventory we have [from] other African countries.”’

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‘Experts explained that, many times, the goal of disinformation campaigns is not to advance a specific agenda but rather, to create the conditions needed for advancing alternative narratives.
“There is a long shadow over the effectiveness of social media disinformation campaigns,” said disinformation researcher Grinberg. “Therefore, it may very well be that the biggest impact of disinformation campaigns – like the ones reported here – is in creating a facade of effectiveness that is larger than life, and pushing us closer to questioning the authenticity of everything we see online.”’

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‘At that stage, Hanan still believed digital trickery could help hide his identity. “Jorge” was still Jorge. During our last meeting, the man who we now knew to be Tal Hanan asked if we saw what was written on the door outside his office in Modi’in. “Nothing. It says nothing. That’s who we are. We’re nothing.” Tal Hanan and Zohar Hanan refused to answer questions. Tal Hanan denied “any wrongdoing.” Zohar Hanan said: “I have been working all my life according to the law!”’

Read the article here.

It could be a novel, including the crude clumsiness – ‘but his brother shouted out from his office: “Crypto! Crypto!”’ – but the damage done to open, liberal societies is too real.

You want distrust? Hire me?

All you need is the spread of distrust of vital institutions, in order to create a fertile soil for the dismantling of everything that stands between civil society and tyranny.