Google continues to disrupt YouTube and Blogger activity associated with the China-linked Dragonbridge threat actor's long-running influence operations, with over 10,000 instances taken down in the first quarter of this year alone.
In 2023, the internet giant disrupted over 65,000 YouTube and Blogger instances linked to Dragonbridge, with 50,000 other instances taken down in 2022.
To date, Google disrupted over 175,000 Dragonbridge instances.
Also known as Spamouflage Dragon, the threat actor has been active since at least 2019, using a spammy network of thousands of inauthentic accounts on forums, social platforms, and websites to promote narratives in line with China's political interests.
In 2022, Mandiant uncovered a largely ineffective Dragonbridge campaign targeting rare earth mining companies in Australia, Canada, and the United States, which overall saw limited engagement from real individuals.
According to a new Google report, Dragonbridge's overall activity consists of low quality content that lacks a political message, with only a small fraction of the observed accounts posting about current events and promoting pro-China narratives.
Observed engagement, the internet giant says, was mostly inauthentic, coming from other accounts operated by the threat actor.
Across its channels and blogs, the threat actor creates low quality content in reaction to breaking news, especially social wedge issues, or in anticipation of events, and was seen ramping up activity ahead of the 2024 general election in Taiwan.
In the days leading up to Taiwan's general election on January 13, the threat actor posted thousands of videos and comments on YouTube, promoting an allegedly 'secret history' document critical of the outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen, but gaining almost no engagement from organic users.
The videos featured AI-generated news hosts, this being the largest Dragonbridge campaign using AI to date.
The group has been experimenting with generative AI tools to create content for several years, Google says.
The threat actor continues to promote political and social narratives that portray the US in a negative light, after previously targeting the US presidential and midterm elections in 2020 and 2022, respectively.
This Cyber News was published on www.securityweek.com. Publication date: Wed, 26 Jun 2024 19:13:05 +0000