An disinformation campaign that aligns with Beijing’s interests alleged the US was behind the recent explosions of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and that the US is backing a prolific hacking group, according to a report published Wednesday by the cybersecurity firm Mandiant.
(Bloomberg) — An disinformation campaign that aligns with Beijing’s interests alleged the US was behind the recent explosions of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and that the US is backing a prolific hacking group, according to a report published Wednesday by the cybersecurity firm Mandiant.
The online propaganda campaign, which Mandiant calls “Dragonbridge,” includes social media posts seeking to discredit the US democratic process, including attempts to discourage Americans from voting in the upcoming midterm elections.
An English language video posted in September claimed that the “solution to America’s ills is not to vote for someone,” but rather to “root out this ineffective and incapacitated system.”
Dragonbridge also posted content that frequently mentioned civil war and claimed that polarization is now fundamentally entrenched in the US political system, according to the report.
Dragonbridge relies on thousands of bogus accounts on various social media platforms and has promoted narratives that fit with China’s political interests since Mandiant began tracking it in 2019, researchers said.
Even so, Mandiant concluded that the campaign hasn’t been particularly effective.
“The Dragonbridge campaign has continued to exhibit aggressiveness through both the content of its narratives and its willingness to experiment with new tactics to accomplish its aims,” the report says.
“Dragonbridge’s attempts to mobilize protesters in the U.S. last year, while failing to meet with any apparent success, was one such demonstration of the campaign’s boldness and interest in influencing real-world activity.
Since then, the campaign has continued to fail to garner any significant engagement.”
In a particularly brazen move, the campaign promoted the claim that the hacking group APT41 is backed by the US government by plagiarizing, altering or mischaracterizing news accounts and research by Mandiant and other cybersecurity organizations.
APT41 has been previously identified as a “prolific Chinese threat group” by Mandiant.
“The US government network APT41 ‘black hands’ has devastated the world,” said a tweet included in Mandiant’s report.
In October, Dragonbridge accounts promoted the narrative that the US had bombed the offshore Nord Stream pipelines for its own economic benefit, at the expense of Europe and its other NATO allies.
Earlier this year, Mandiant detailed an effort to target rare earth mining companies that posed a threat to “PRC Market dominance.” Accounts linked to the campaign employed similar tactics, including impersonating Texans concerned about the environment.
Influence campaigns promoting the interests of various nations have become increasingly common over the last decade, but as Mandiant identifies with Dragonbridge, they rarely attract much engagement.
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