Facebook abusers who organize misinformation campaigns with fake profiles on the world’s largest social media network are getting better at avoiding detection by covering their tracks and hiding their identities, Reuters reports, citing recent statements from a number of professionals from the cybersecurity industry. Ben Nimmo of Digital Forensic Research Lab is pointing to a new trend of abusers relying more on stealing content from the Internet and avoiding writing their own messages so as to minimize the chances of being identified through “linguistic mistakes” as a problematic phenomenon with no clear-cut remedies.
Data insight firm Graphika expressed a similar sentiment during a U.S. Senate panel hearing on election meddling and online misinformation earlier this week, arguing that social media abusers are constantly evolving alongside the efforts aimed at stopping them so even while they’re not always a step ahead of the digital platforms they’re trying to game for malicious purposes, they often have a chance of gaining an upper hand on them. Facebook itself conceded to that stance several days back while disclosing the discovery of yet another large-scale misinformation campaign it discovered on its flagships service and Instagram, stating that the new malicious actors it discovered went through great lengths to obscure their identities through third parties paying for ads and virtual private networks hiding their true geographical location. As a result, the company is still trying to determine where the newly found attackers originate from.
The misleading Facebook campaign in question pushed for a number of protests across the U.S. covering both sides of the political spectrum and is believed to have been organized with the goal of further dividing the American public so as to influence the outcome of this year’s mid-term elections taking place on November 6. The controversy surrounding misinformation started following the 2016 presidential election which saw meddling from a number of Russian agents, 25 of whom have already been indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, alongside three other entities from the same country.