[Korea ETNews] China, Information Warfare... Mobilizing Public Opinion Manipulation And APT Group

The Chinese government has expanded its information warfare to the highest level in the past. It has been confirmed that even the Chinese government-supported Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) hacking organization has been mobilized to manipulate public opinion such as disseminating fake news. APT organizations have gone beyond intelligence warfare. This is the first time that it has been confirmed that they have participated in public opinion.

According to a report released by Taiwanese threat intelligence company TeamT5 at the recent SANS Summit, false accounts opened on social network service (SNS) platforms such as Facebook, Google (YouTube), and Twitter have been investigated at an all-time high.

TeamT5 made this statement based on the number of closed accounts published on each SNS platform. Google said it had removed 186 YouTube channels that are estimated to be involved in the Chinese information war in the second quarter of last year.

The Chinese government is known to hold a pro-Chinese content and dissemination of false facts, which are known to be engaged in a defensive public opinion battle that includes state-run media and spam botnets while creating false accounts to create favorable public opinion. The number of Facebook pages used by The New York Times, CNN, and BBC pages exceeded the number of followers two years ago. As of April 2019, the number of followers on CGTN's Facebook page, the Chinese state media, was 75 million, while The New York Times, CNN, and BBC had 50 million each.

It wasn't even crazy. Targeting Taiwan, which the Chinese government observes, the APT hacking organization used "Juiker" to spread false information, which is a popular SNS platform used in Taiwan like KakaoTalk.

TeamT5 said, "The APT Group is an organization that focuses on espionage and information stealing, and the fact that they are mobilized in information warfare means that the Chinese government is putting all efforts into information warfare," and "It is urgent," TeamT5 CTI analyst Che Chang warned.

The Chinese government turned out to build a system tool that monitors public opinion using Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, a system that can monitor not only domestic social media but also sensitive websites distributed abroad.

TeamT5 is a security company founded by APT experts. It tracks and monitors versions between the Chinese government and supplies threat intelligence to Asia-Pacific regions such as Taiwan and Japan.