FireEye has a great summary of its investigation of Iran's use of fake news sites to disseminate stories that support Iran's positions on mostly political issues. The report is simple and easy to read, but not very technical. They promise to publish more as it becomes available. The targets were in the US, UK, Latin America and the Middle East. They were definitely covering the waterfront on this one.
There were two main organizations involved, Liberty Front Press and Instituto Manquehue. The article says this about what these groups were doing: " Broadly speaking, the intent behind this activity appears to be to promote Iranian political interests, including anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes, as well as to promote support for specific U.S. policies favorable to Iran, such as the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA). " There is a nice graphic of the relationship between the different entities involved and their targets, but it is general and not the usual tracking diagrams that investigators put together. It is good enough to know that a more detailed map is probably available if it is needed.
If the Iranians are going to this much trouble to sell people on the Iran nuclear agreement they must think this agreement is good for them. A lot of people do not. They want to change attitudes and beliefs about this agreement. Note they did not target the EU. Sometimes, who you do not target tells us as much as who you do.
Added: Google says it removed 39 YouTube Channels that were owned by Iran. They apparently used the research done by FireEye to make this amazing discovery.
No comments:
Post a Comment