Facebook Takes Down Network Of Fake Accounts Linked to Belarusian Domestic Intelligence Service Used To Stoke Border Crisis

US media is report­ing that Face­book took down a net­work of fake accounts oper­at­ed by Belarus’s domes­tic intel­li­gence ser­vice KGB used to pose as jour­nal­ists and activists to stoke ten­sions about the cri­sis at the bor­der between Belarus and Poland. Accord­ing to a CNN report:

Decem­ber 1, 2021 Meta, the com­pa­ny for­mer­ly known as Face­book, says it has evi­dence the Belaru­sian KGB used fake accounts to pose as jour­nal­ists and activists to stoke ten­sions about the cri­sis at the bor­der between Belarus and Poland. “These fic­ti­tious per­sonas post­ed crit­i­cism of Poland in Eng­lish, Pol­ish, and Kur­dish, includ­ing pic­tures and videos about Pol­ish bor­der guards alleged­ly vio­lat­ing migrants’ rights,” Meta said in an announce­ment Wednes­day. To make the fake per­sonas con­vinc­ing, some of the accounts like­ly used pro­file pic­tures of fake faces gen­er­at­ed using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, so-called “deep­fake” tech­nol­o­gy, Meta said.  In total, Meta said it had iden­ti­fied and removed 41 Face­book accounts, four Insta­gram accounts, and five Face­book groups linked to the Belaru­sian KGB.

Read the rest here.

Accord­ing to Meta’s Adver­sar­i­al Threat Report, Face­book removed 41 accounts, five Groups, and four Insta­gram accounts in Belarus that pri­mar­i­ly tar­get­ed audi­ences in the Mid­dle East and Europe.

The Belarus-Poland bor­der cri­sis is a migrant cri­sis con­sist­ing of an ille­gal influx of tens of thou­sands of Mid­dle East­ern and African immi­grants to Lithua­nia, Latvia, and Poland via Belarus that Pol­ish author­i­ties have described as a low-inten­si­ty hybrid war­fare cam­paign con­duct­ed by Belarus against the Euro­pean Union.

Last month we report­ed that Belarus was alleged­ly behind a hack­ing and dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign tar­get­ing East­ern Euro­pean NATO mem­bers since 2016.