Attacks involved the use of real journalists' names and photos on bylines for the fraudulent stories.
Malicious news websites with articles purporting to be from legitimate journalists have been leveraged by Russia-based threat operation Storm-1516 as part of a new disinformation campaign.
Operated against Armenia, France, Germany, Moldova, and Norway, attacks involved the use of real journalists' names and photos on bylines for the fraudulent stories. These included an article supposedly written by Public magazine journalist Romain Fiaschetti accusing French nuclear firm Orano's radioactive waste disposal efforts in Armenia and donations to a fund connected to the country's prime minister, a report from fact-checking initiative Gnida Project and reported by The Record, claimed.
Other false stories spread by the group involved made-up accusations of U.S. aid embezzlement against Moldovan President Maia Sandu, and allegations of illegal polar bear killings by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Canada.
Such findings come after Storm-1516 was noted by French authorities to be a formidable threat to European public debate.
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
