Australian news outlets, including the ABC, have been targeted by a sophisticated new pro-Russian influence campaign, designed to sway public opinion about the war in Ukraine, according to researchers.
Australian Associated Press (AAP), The Daily Aus, The Conversation and the ABC are among 800 organisations in more than 75 countries that have been approached over email or social media to debunk purpose-made false content, such as anti-Ukrainian graffiti or fake news clips.
The coordinated effort has been dubbed Operation Overload in a report by Check First, a Finnish software company that investigates online disinformation, and Reset Tech, an online safety not-for-profit group.
The novel and surprising part of the campaign is that its tactics target journalists directly, instead of trying to push fake news onto the general public, as has previously been the case.
The name Operation Overload was chosen because one of its main goals seems to be clogging fact checking systems in newsrooms.
"Their hope is to use journalists … to have them waste time and resources," Check First's CEO Guillaume Kuster said.
The other main goal is to have their bogus content republished.
Creating misinformation specifically to have it publicly debunked by fact checkers may seem counterintuitive, but researchers believe the group is operating from the assumption that "all publicity is good publicity".
"Even if there's a big red cross and the word 'fake' on top of the narrative, it would make someone laugh or it would stick in someone's brain," Mr Kuster said.
Check First's report has uncovered many instances where international journalists went on to re-platform the false information.
"If we talk about how journalists were tricked, we could find more than 250 legitimate debunks," Mr Kuster said.
Although there's no indication that any Australian outlets were among them.
The overarching purpose of the operation, according to Check First, is to sow doubt about the wisdom of supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia.
The campaign's aim is to "propagate these narratives in the heads of Australians", says Mr Kuster, so that people ask: "Should we be with the US and the Europeans in support of the war effort in Ukraine?"
According to the report, it may be an attempt to exploit a phenomenon known as "the illusory truth effect" — the human tendency to believe falsehoods after encountering them multiple times.
Check First has been tracking the campaign since it began in August 2023, before ramping up in January and reaching a peak in February and March 2024.
The overall volume of activity has diminished slightly since then, but not by much — some of the tweets targeting the ABC were published as recently as May.
While only a small number of Australian targets were identified in the report, Mr Kuster said their research was focused on Europe, and most likely provides only a glimpse of the true scale of activity in other countries, including Australia.
"There is no way for us to assess how exhaustive we are … we think we've just seen the tip of the iceberg," he said.
Check First, along with other researchers in the field, say the tactics being deployed are an innovation on the usual playbook.
"This is the first time we're documenting these potential state-sponsored entities specifically targeting the news and fact checkers themselves," said Shane Ripley, a senior cyber threat analyst at private intelligence company, Recorded Future.
"Primarily what these campaigns were focused on before was just flooding the media itself with lots of fake news," he said.
"But with this Operation Overload and some of the research we've put out, this is misinformation on a different level."
Weaponising the 'Streisand Effect': how operatives try to trick fact checkers
Each attempt starts with an email or a tweet, purporting to be from a concerned citizen, containing bait in the form of links.
The journalist or investigator is encouraged to "check out" the content.
In some instances, it's images of fake graffiti on the streets of Paris.
Analysis by digital forensics investigators who contributed to the research found that the supposed graffiti had in fact been superimposed onto recognisable locations, for maximum impact.
"Frankly, some of these graffitis made us laugh because they were well put together … [using] local cultural references and local humour," Mr Kuster said.
The message to the journalist might even include a link to fake media coverage of the graffiti.
Another commonly used bait is a fake news video, seemingly from another outlet, smearing Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, or Ukrainians in general.
Check First says the outfit's news imitations are sophisticated, and improving over time.
"They do exactly the same graphics [as] the channel they're impersonating," Mr Kuster said.
"The same kind of rhythm in the editing … fonts and layouts."
Occasionally, the falsehood is something completely unexpected, and seemingly irrelevant — perhaps an eye-grabbing fake headline related to a celebrity.
For example, one email said: "Moby has not given any concerts lately, this is very strange information, please check it out."
Usually though, there's a clear link back to Ukraine, or an attempt "to emphasise divisions within European societies," Mr Kuster says.
Most importantly, in order for the technique to work, the fake content must appear to already be widespread, and therefore in desperate need of debunking.
"They would post different versions of the same narrative… on websites they control, Instagram channels and multiple Telegram channels, and coordinate… to give a false impression that, hey, that piece of content is everywhere," Mr Kuster said.
If the journalist is taken in and publishes an item debunking the fake, it's a case of 'the Streisand effect' — where an attempt to suppress information amplifies it instead.
Who's behind 'Operation Overload'?
While the aims of Operation Overload align with the interests of the Kremlin, researchers say it's not possible to confirm whether Russia itself might be responsible.
"All we can say is, looking at the narratives, it's pro-Russian," Mr Kuster said.
There are clues, such as stray lines of Cyrillic left in emails, and URLs that link back to Telegram channels with names such as "The Hand of the Kremlin", but nothing that constitutes proof.
Even the size of the team behind the operations remains a mystery, he said.
"There could be one or two people behind the fake accounts or tens of them."
However the sophistication and scale of the operation is a clue in its own right, according to Shane Ripley, from Recorded Future.
"There aren't many private entities or individuals that would have the expertise, the resources, the know-how and the strategy to identify targets on this scale," he said.
"This would be a very, very big operation… requiring multiple experts in different things.
"You've got [to have] an army of people behind you to do something like this on the scale that we've seen."
Check First warns that Operation Overload is unlikely to stop any time soon.
Dr Ripley says the AUKUS alliance, coupled with an upcoming federal election, may further motivate groups like this one to target Australia.
"AUKUS unfortunately puts us in the crosshairs," he said.
"Influencing Australia also directly influences the US and UK at a political level.
"If [fact checking] gets harder to do … then we've got a much wider problem on our hands."
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