Cyber crime: numerous cases of political influence

Cyber crime: numerous cases of political influence

San Francisco, 8/20/2023

Mandiant, a cybersecurity company owned by Google, has found “numerous” instances of AI-generated content in online political influencer campaigns over the past four years.

The campaigns have been spearheaded by groups linked to countries like Russia, China, Iran, and others. This included campaigns by groups working with governments

Ethiopia, Indonesia, Cuba, Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador and El Salvador are allied, the report said.

Researchers at the Virginia-based company have found “numerous instances” since 2019 of AI-generated content, such as fake profile pictures, being used in politically motivated online influencer campaigns. –

This is happening amid a boom in generative AI — and it’s models like ChatGPT that make it significantly easier to create compelling fake videos, images, text, and computer code. Security officials have warned that such models are being used by cybercriminals.

“To date, we have not seen a single incident response that involved AI,” Joyce said. “They haven’t really been put into any practical application beyond what would be possible with the normal tools that we’ve seen.”

However, she added: “We can be very confident that this will be an issue that will only get worse over time.”

“To date, we have not seen a single incident response that involved AI,” said Sandra Joyce, vice president of Mandiant. “They haven’t really been put into any practical application beyond what would be possible with the normal tools that we’ve seen.”

However, she added: “We can be very confident that this will be an issue that will only get worse over time.”

According to Mandiant, the rise of generative AI can enable resource-constrained groups to create higher-quality content for large-scale influencer campaigns.

One example is Dragonbridge, the pro-China information campaign aimed at pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

According to Sandra Joyce, Vice President of Mandiant, since 2019, Dragonbridge has grown rapidly across 30 social platforms and 10 languages. Still, the impact of these campaigns was limited. “They haven’t really changed the course of the threat landscape yet.”

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