‘War Is Coming’: Mysterious TikTok Videos Are Scaring Sweden’s Childrenhttps://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2022/01/war-coming-mysterious-tiktok-videos-are-scaring-swedens-children/360808/In Sweden, an unusual anxiety is afflicting children and young teenagers. Some can’t sleep. Some ask their parents if Russia is about to attack their country. Where did they get that idea? TikTok.
“War is coming,” say some of the videos that the social-media platform is feeding to young Swedes. Other videos tell their Swedish users that Russian forces will bomb their country or even invade. No wonder the children are becoming anxious. [B[The Chinese-owned, algorithm-driven platform is, in fact, the perfect tool for a country wishing to weaken another country’s morale.[/b]
This weekend a question posted on Twitter turned into a gathering of adults concerned about things they’d been picking up from their nine-, ten-, eleven, twelve-year-old children and pupils. Is it true that information saying that war is coming to Sweden is being pumped out on TikTok? a Twitter user asked. The question drew dozens of parents to report that their young children had suddenly begun asking if Russia was about to invade.
https://twitter.com/emlukina/status/1482265905006583809On Saturday, the Swedish daily
Aftonbladet reported that BRIS – a nationwide Swedish organization that advocates for children’s rights and operates a hotline for children and teenagers – had begun receiving phone calls from children and teenagers anxious about an impending invasion.
BRIS social worker Marie Angsell told the newspaper that TikTok’s efficient algorithm, which has perfected individualized feeds, means that children and teenagers who view such videos once are consequently fed more of the same and end up overwhelmed by fear of a looming conflict.https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/wO5eqo/bilden-av-ett-sverige-i-krig-sprids-pa-tiktokSomeone is trying to weaken Sweden’s resolve by frightening children. To be sure, anyone might be concerned by news reports of the past week’s failed NATO-Russia negotiations, Russia’s veiled threat of “catastrophic consequence”, and Poland’s warning that Europe is on the brink of war. But few children, tweens, and teens read the newspaper: in Sweden, three percent do so on a daily basis. Some 30 percent, by contrast, use TikTok.
https://www.mpf.se/en/... The
Swedish Psychological Defense Agency was launched on New Year’s Day to strengthen the public’s resilience to disinformation. Importantly, it will also conduct the complicated work of identifying and exposing the perpetrators of disinformation. With the TikTok disinformation campaign in full swing, the Psychological Defense Agency will need to swiftly issue advice – on TikTok perhaps – to children, teenagers, parents, and teachers.
Indeed, other countries should consider a similar move. If the war-anxiety machine hasn’t already reached their children, it will soon.
Social media algorithms makes the adage that all is fair in love and war easier than ever to implement.-------------------------------------------
Microsoft Warns of Destructive Disk Wiper Targeting Ukrainehttps://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/01/microsoft-warns-of-destructive-disk-wiper-targeting-ukraine/Over the past few months, geopolitical tensions have escalated as Russia amassed tens of thousands of troops along Ukraine’s border and made subtle but far-reaching threats if Ukraine and NATO don’t agree to Kremlin demands.
Now, a similar dispute is playing out in cyber arenas, as unknown hackers late last week defaced scores of Ukrainian government websites and left a cryptic warning to Ukrainian citizens who attempted to receive services.
“All data on the computer is being destroyed, it is impossible to recover it,” said a message, written in Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish, that appeared late last week on at least some of the infected systems. “All information about you has become public, be afraid and expect the worst."
Around the same time, Microsoft said in a post over the weekend, “destructive” malware with the ability to permanently destroy computers and all data stored on them began appearing on the networks a dozens of government, nonprofit, and information technology organizations, all based in Ukraine. The malware—which Microsoft is calling Whispergate—masquerades as ransomware and demands $10,000 in bitcoin for data to be restored.
But Whispergate lacks the means to distribute decryption keys and provide technical support to victims, traits that are found in virtually all working ransomware deployed in the wild. It also overwrites the master boot record—a part of the hard drive that starts the operating system during bootup.
“Overwriting the MBR is atypical for cybercriminal ransomware,” members of the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center wrote in Saturday’s post. “In reality, the ransomware note is a ruse and that the malware destructs MBR and the contents of the files it targets. There are several reasons why this activity is inconsistent with cybercriminal ransomware activity observed by MSTIC.”
Over the weekend, Serhiy Demedyuk, deputy head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told news outlets that preliminary findings from a joint investigation of several Ukrainian state agencies show that a threat actor group known as UNC1151 was likely behind the defacement hack. The group, which researchers at security firm Mandiant have linked to the government of Russian ally Belarus, was behind an influence campaign named Ghostwriter.
Ghostwriter worked by using phishing emails and theft domains that spoof legitimate websites such as Facebook to steal victim credentials. With control of content management systems belonging to news sites and other heavily trafficked properties, UNC1151 “primarily promoted anti-NATO narratives that appeared intended to undercut regional security cooperation in operations targeting Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland,” authors of the Mandiant report wrote.
https://www.mandiant.com/resources/unc1151-linked-to-belarus-governmentReuters on Monday reported Ukraine’s cyber police found that last week’s defacement appeared to have destroyed “external information resources.”
“A number of external information resources were manually destroyed by the attackers,” the police said, without elaborating. The police added: “It can already be argued that the attack is more complex than modifying the homepage of websites.”
https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/crime-pmn/ukrainian-police-say-cyber-attack-destroyed-information-resources-2... In 2017, NotPetya, a massive outbreak of malware initially believed to be ransomware shut down computers around the world and resulted in $10 billion in total damages, making it the most costly cyberattack ever. ... In 2020, federal prosecutors charged four Russian nationals for alleged hacking crimes involving NotPetya.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/petya-outbreak-was-a-chaos-sowing-wiper-not-profit-seeking-ransomware/Researchers and government officials have linked Russia to two other cyberattacks targeting Ukraine, a country that seems to be a testing ground for various Russian hacking tools and techniques, including:
- A computer intrusion in late 2015 against regional power authorities in Ukraine caused a power failure that left hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity in the dead of winter.
- Almost exactly one year later, a second attack at an electricity substation outside Kyiv once again left residents without power.
... if concerns about an armed conflict weren’t enough, there’s now reason to consider that tensions could spill into the cyber realm, with potentially much more at stake.
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активные мероприятия: aktivnye meropriyatiya
Political warfare conducted by the Soviet or Russian government since the 1920s. It includes offensive programs such as disinformation, propaganda, deception, sabotage, destabilization, subversion, and espionage. The programs are based on foreign policy priorities
... Various techniques are used, and are aimed at influencing a target audience's value system, belief system, emotions, motives, reasoning, or behavior. It is used to induce confessions or reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to the originator's objectives, and are sometimes combined with black operations or false flag tactics. It is also used to destroy the morale of enemies through tactics that aim to depress troops' psychological states.
Target audiences can be governments, organizations, groups, and individuals, and is not just limited to soldiers.
Civilians of foreign territories can also be targeted by technology and media so as to cause an effect in the government of their country.-------------------------------------------
... According to U.S. military analysts, attacking the enemy’s mind is also an important element of the People's Republic of China's military strategy. This type of warfare is rooted in the Chinese Stratagems outlined by Sun Tzu in
The Art of War and
Thirty-Six Stratagems.圍魏救趙, Wéi Wèi jiù Zhào
... When the enemy is too strong to be attacked directly, attack something they cherish. The idea is to avoid a head-on battle with a strong enemy, and instead strike at their weakness elsewhere. This will force the strong enemy to retreat in order to support their weakness. Battling against a tired and dispirited enemy will give a much higher chance of success.
Loot a burning house (趁火打劫, Chèn huǒ dǎ jié)
When a country is beset by internal problems, such as disease, division, corruption, and crime, it is poorly-equipped to deal with an outside threat. If the enemy is in its weakest state, attack them without mercy and annihilate them to prevent future troubles.
Make a sound in the east, then strike in the west (聲東擊西, Shēng dōng jī xī)
Kill with a borrowed knife (借刀殺人, Jiè dāo shā rén)
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