By Staff Writer
Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) on Tuesday removed hundreds of accounts tied to Iranian actors that were promoting Iran’s geopolitical agenda around the globe, according to a cyber security firm.
The Iranian campaign to spread the Regime’s narratives through a network of fake news websites and fraudulent social media personas on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google Plus and YouTube, was discovered by cyber security company FireEye Inc, who found that the campaign was targeted at users in the United States, Britain, Latin America and the Middle East.
This drew comparisons with Russia’s online influence campaigns, but FireEye posited that the tactics are being used for vastly different reasons. The Iranian activity advocated policies favourable to Iran, like the US-Iran nuclear deal and echoed “anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes”.
This announcement came amid heightened concerns about foreign attempts to disrupt the US midterm election in November, but FireEye said that the Iranian activity did not seem “dedicated” to influence the upcoming election, although many of the posts were critical of Donald Trump and his decision to pull out of the nuclear deal.
Lee Foster, an information operations analyst with FireEye, said: “[This] could suggest a more active attempt to influence domestic US political discourse [is coming, but] we just haven’t seen that yet.”
According to FireEye, the US-focused activity increased dramatically after Trump took office, although the domain for the fake websites “US Journal” and “Liberty Free Press” were registered a couple of years prior and remained inactive.
Although FireEye was not able to tie the accounts to a specific organization or individuals, they reported “moderate confidence” about the Iranian origins based on the information they do have, including user phone numbers, email addresses, website registration records and the timing of account activity. However, any links to Iran should be considered the actions of the Iranian Regime as these are not the actions taken by lone hackers interested in monetary gain.
Facebook reported that it had removed 254 pages and 392 accounts across Facebook and Instagram, some of which had groups and events linked to them. They said that hundreds of thousands of people followed one or more of these pages and accounts.
Facebook also said that the accounts spent about $12,000 to advertise through Facebook and Instagram, which the company has notified the US Treasury and State departments about, as it may be a violation of the sanctions.
Twitter called the Iranian effort “coordinated manipulation” and removed 284 accounts.
Neither Alphabet nor the Iranian mission to the United Nations responded to a request for comment.
