Hackers Targets News Sites, Initiating the Propaganda of Fake Stories

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Over the past few years, a group of people are targeting famous news websites. They are actually posting unreal stories about other people. In addition to that, they are also sharing them to social media before the host site can delete the news. This incident happened in some parts of western Europe.

The spread of fake news created panic amongst the people as the victims were related to the defence systems of a certain country. This can be one of the most controversial news that people will talk about all over the world.

The Ghostwriters

There is a group of people named Ghostwriters. These kinds of people write fake content, hack a well-known news website, and post them. People read these contents and gain fake knowledge about the innocent victim.

What really happened?

The fake content was about NATO and US troops in Poland and the Baltic states. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is the alliance among the political and military units for maintaining world peace.

Many countries like Albania, Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Hungary, and others are involved in NATO. The ghostwriters have posted the fake news in the pro-Russian news websites.

According to certain reports, the ghostwriters have chosen superb tactics by hacking the main content management system. After that, with the help of spoofed emails and social media posts, they have spread the news.

There are also propaganda writers on the other websites that were ready to accept and give positive feedback on the fake post.

Details of the Hacking Campaign

It all started with hijacking the websites of the European countries from Poland to Lithuania. The stories were all about the United States military aggression. In addition to that, the hackers also posted news about the NATO soldiers spreading Coronavirus. Moreover, there is also some fake news about NATO that the soldiers are planning to invade Belarus.

Intelligence reports say that they are making people believe that NATO soldiers are affected by the virus. This can spread the virus to half of Europe causing devastating consequences. Moreover, they are also triggering these stories in the local media websites and blogs by hacking them too.

These fictional stories bona fide amongst the people by those websites, allowing them to spread the links of the stories all over social media. In addition to that, the experts didn’t know about the exact process performed by the hackers to steal the credentials of the content management system.

Technical Analyst’s Opinions

An organization named FireEye took an initiative to look upon this matter. They also revealed that the fake news not only spread in the social media and blogs but also it was spreading through anti-NATO and anti-US websites.

The analysts also believed that there was no financial motivation behind this incident. Also, no political involvement too. The hackers just did this in order to create a conflict between NATO and all the people of the European subcontinent.

Another fake story?

Just like this time, in the year 2018, there was also another fake story published. The story was about a US military armed vehicle strikes a Lithuanian child who was riding a bicycle. The boy was shot dead. After the news posted on social media, the readers of Lithuania reported that the news was fake.

The Fake Invasion

On the other hand, the ghostwriters have also published fake news that NATO is planning to invade Belarus. They are so creative that they even made a plan on how the NATO soldiers of Poland and the Baltic States will cross the neighbouring international border.

When people saw the news, they were in a deep panic and about to question themselves, is this the start of World War IV? Remembering the dark scars of WW2 on heart and history, the hackers also posted about German NATO soldiers desecrating a Jewish cemetery.

The actual thing is that it is an edited and photoshopped image of a military vehicle where the hackers put a German flag with the help of a computer application. Naturally, people of Europe will be scared of remembering the facts related to Auschwitz in the past.

Fake News on Coronavirus

Recently, there was also fake news on Coronavirus that an American soldier is hospitalized and is in severe condition. Rumours spread against him that he has attended all the public places and also took part in major gathering events. He was affected by the virus and thus, there was a chance for other people to get affected by him, too.