Tag Archives: Cyber Security

Facebook and Twitter Delete Russian Troll Farms based in Ghana for Election Interference

March 14, 2020 Madison Santel

Evidence of Ongoing Disinformation Campaign

Four years ago, Russia played an illegal hand in deciding the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, using social media to spread misinformation, disenfranchise voters, and contribute to the Trump campaign in ways that reaped obvious results. Following the election, social media and tech moguls behind companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and more have been called into question, pressed by politicians to provide greater cyber security and proactively catch instances of foreign powers trying to infiltrate American politics.

While actual amendments made by these social media companies have appeared lackluster and hollow—changes in leadership, marketing ploys, logo changes, etc.—Facebook and Twitter did recently find and suspend several accounts that were linked to Russian operations.

Feb 26, 2020: Twitter suspends all accounts associated with EBLA office in Ghana
– CNN

These accounts, ran by people from Ghana, were targeting African/Black American constituents, making radical posts about liberation, identity, and rebellion. Although the posts did not show preference for any specific candidate, they were unambiguously voicing a political message and attempting to influence the American populace at this integral time.

The Ghanaian-based group that ran these accounts was dubbed EBLA online. Across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the group had over 150 pages and accounts, and over a quarter-million followers. It also had a false headquarters location of Charleston, South Carolina to appear authentically American.

March 12, 2020:Facebook removes 49 accounts, 69 pages and 85 Instagram accounts associated with the troll farm. Twitter removes 72 EBLA accounts.
– CNN estimate based on multi-month investigation

Obvious Inauthentic Behavior Masked by Human Trolls

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Tech company personnel, AI security software, and a few active users noticed the conspicuous aspects of these page’s posts and flagged them. Further analysis eventually ousted them as inauthentic. Oddly enough, however, the investigation revealed that the posts were not created by bots (which is typical for such scams), but by actual people in Ghana. Thus, it took real digging along with some cross references with Russia’s previous posts to realize that EBLA was tied up and led by Russian operations. The Ghanaian representatives were essentially a ploy, an extra layer of protection for Russia to carry out its sneaky offenses

In the end, EBLA got the boot from social media, kicked off of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. While EBLA never endorsed or even mentioned a 2020 candidate, this seemed like an appropriate precaution on the social networks’ behalves, for the foreign accounts were clearly attempting to sway the American political climate.

Ever since its social media exile, EBLA has gone silent and reporters have been unable to reach anyone involved in with the suspicious organization. In the digital age, disappearing becomes quite easy. Such is why social network users have to be all the more vigilant, critiquing false information and halting suspicious online behavior before it overtakes the truth this election year.

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Business, Tech

Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin Step Down, Displacing Accountability To Sundar Pichai

January 2, 2020 Kat Lee

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google and respective President and CEO of its parent company Alphabet Inc, have officially announced plans to step down from their high-ranking management roles in the tech world. Page and Brin created the Google search engine in 1998 when they were PhD students at Stanford University. Since then, the two have expanded the company into a multi-purpose technological empire.

Now, twenty-one years later, the forty-six year old entrepreneurs are resigning from their leading positions at Google. However, given the stress that Google is under, they are retiring at a suspiciously convenient time. And even though they are sacrificing their titles, they are simultaneously managing to maintain stakes in the Google brand.

Taking over for Page and Brin is Pichai Sundararajan—better known as Sundar Pichai, the former number-two at Google who has practically been acting as the face of the company for the past few years. As the two founders have found themselves more invested in Google’s experimental sectors recently—Brin focusing on GoogleX’s driverless cars and Google Glasses while Page has shifted his attention towards flying automobiles—most of the Google’s more widely-used properties have fallen under Pichai’s supervision.

Pichai has been with Google since 2004. He is responsible for convincing the company to start its own browser in 2008, which lead to the immensely successful Google Chrome. In 2013, he took over the Android Division, better integrating Google properties into the line of smartphones without sacrificing their affordability. He also spearheaded the development of Chrome OS, the operating system that fuels Google’s popular Chromebook laptops.

Indeed, Pichai is an obvious choice to replace Page and Brin as CEO of Google and Alphabet. The man has practically been running the company’s mainstream innovations for the past ten years, while its founders take the backseat to play out their billion dollar tech fantasies.

Then again, Page and Brin are far from exiled from the Google community. Although they are no longer acting leaders, they will still keep their fourteen percent stakes in the company’s finances. As majority stockholders, they will also retain influence over Alphabet’s decisions. Thus, Page and Brin’s step down from power is hardly a step down at all, but rather an excuse to hold onto control while dodging personal accountability in trying times.

And trying times these are indeed for Google. Within the past year especially, Congress and other authorities have been cracking down on tech conglomerates such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and of course, Google. Like its fellow cyber juggernauts, Alphabet has been criticized for having a monopoly on data. Not only are users starting to think that Google wields too much power, but they also fear what it is doing with such power, as the worldwide company becomes oddly elusive when questioned about its privacy standards, information distribution, and business ethics.

Even Marc Zuckerberg had the slightest integrity to come before Congress and speak for Facebook during the Senate Committee hearing on big tech last year. Page and Brin, however, were nowhere to be found. Despite being requested at the hearing, they left a conspicuously empty seat in Washington DC with Google’s name on it.

Ever since cyber ethics and big tech have become hot topics in the media, the founders of Google have been moving further and further away from the spotlight. Their resignation from Alphabet as a whole signifies their ultimate fall into the shadows, where no one can accuse them of immorality or illegality on behalf of the company. The burden will now fall on Pichai.

In a way, little has changed. Pichai has more or less been answering for Page and Brin for a while, handling publicity and leading all of the launches that come from Google. Now, however, he holds the actual crown—even if Page and Brin are keeping the royal treasure. With any luck, though, maybe Pichai will improve Google, not just by creating more innovative software, but by bettering Alphabet’s approach to security, designing tech with human decency in mind, and actually owning up and responding to some of the company’s mistakes as they come.

It’s unlikely and perhaps foolishly optimistic, but it’s a silver lining that users can grasp onto given the (albeit somewhat empty) change in Google’s leadership.

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Business, Politics, Tech

Amnesty International Calls Out Google and Facebook for Lack of Cyber-Security And Invasion of Privacy

November 23, 2019 Lynxotic News Staff

Consensus Building Rapidly Against the Business Models of Internet Giants

Earlier this week, Amnesty International, a non-governmental organization from the UK, called Google and Facebook’s practices of omnipresent surveillance on people around the world an “assault on privacy.” The organization, which focuses on human rights, recently released a report outlining how these two major tech companies hold too much power and should change their business models to stop infringing on users’ personal information.

Amnesty International’s accusations may seem extreme, but that does not mean that they are inaccurate. While Google and Facebook might appear to be free websites, the reality is that you pay for their services with your data. Whenever you search for something, you feed the sites information—information that they can sell, manipulate, market, or use for a countless number of other things, some of them perhaps unethical.

The upside is that data is cheap, and therefore these websites are not about to start charging you. The downside, however, is that there are really no limits to how tech juggernauts like Google or Facebook (or Apple, or Amazon, or Microsoft for that matter) use the data you provide them. No concrete laws in the United States monitor these companies’ use of data, and given that the Internet was built as a place of free-flowing information, there are no internal boundaries that stop these websites from taking full, unrestricted advantage of your information.

This is not the first time that Facebook and Google have been called out for issues regarding privacy and cyber-ethics. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has found himself before Congress on more than one occasion recently. Ever since it became known that Cambridge Analytica used web data to falsely advertise on Facebook during the 2016 elections, the social network’s surveillance tactics have been in question.

Benign Monarchs? Not Likely.

As for Google, the website practically has a monopoly on web-searches across the world. The search engine accounts for 90% of the Internet searches on Earth, and it is not always transparent about what it does with the resulting data. With such huge numbers, though, Google can afford to distribute your extensive information to just about anyone—even government organizations or institutions with malintent.

The two companies usually respond to these kinds of accusations with vague optimism about current and future cyber-safety. Google claims to have changed its model within the last year, making the site more user-friendly and giving its patrons more control. Meanwhile, Facebook has largely stood its ground when it comes to online freedom. Zuckerberg and other Facebook officials have suggested that they will heighten security, but they simultaneously stand by that censorship on any scale is constrictive and antithetical to the website’s intent.

Facebook also owns Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and several other websites/apps that are used across borders, making the issue a conglomerate and worldly one. Although they are both American companies by origin, both Facebook and Google are international entities. Thus, creating laws around their practices is a complicated and culturally sensitive process.

At the same time, though, these enterprises have been going unchecked and unchallenged for well over a decade now. When they started, the digital world was much smaller and very different than it is now. Technology has changed, and so has the world— now the rules that govern it must follow suit.