Google on Thursday disclosed it took steps to dismantle over 50,000 cases of exercise orchestrated by a pro-Chinese affect operation referred to as DRAGONBRIDGE in 2022.
“Most DRAGONBRIDGE exercise is low high quality content material and not using a political message, populated throughout many channels and blogs,” the corporate’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) stated in a report shared with The Hacker News. “However, a small fraction of DRAGONBRIDGE accounts additionally put up about present occasions with messaging that pushes pro-China speaking factors.”
DRAGONBRIDGE was first uncovered by Google-owned Mandiant in July 2022, calling out its unsuccessful efforts in concentrating on uncommon earth mining corporations in Australia, Canada, and the U.S. with the objective of triggering environmental protests towards the companies.
Also recognized by the title Spamouflage Dragon, the spammy affect community is thought to have a presence throughout a number of platforms, together with YouTube, Blogger, Facebook, and Twitter, primarily disseminating narratives important of the U.S. and favorable of China.
Some of the narratives included claims that the U.S. was interfering within the home affairs of different nations, whereas additionally highlighting themes of political discord, racial inequality, and inflation in an try to indicate the nation in a destructive mild.
The criticism of the U.S. however, DRAGONBRIDGE’s pro-China content material featured narratives praising the nation’s COVID-19 pandemic response, condemning pro-democracy protests, and intensifying help for the unification of Taiwan with China.
As a part of its efforts to disrupt the risk actor’s exercise, Google stated it terminated 100,960 accounts throughout YouTube, Blogger, and AdSense. It additional famous that regardless of the profuse content material manufacturing, DRAGONBRIDGE failed to draw an natural viewers.
That, nevertheless, hasn’t stopped the group from persistently tweaking its strategies by creating animated political cartoons and producing greater high quality content material in an effort to lure actual customers, TAG researchers cautioned.
In all, 56,771 YouTube channels created by DRAGONBRIDGE have been disabled in 2022, with 58% of them having zero subscribers and 42% of the movies posted in these channels having zero views. On prime of that, roughly 95% of the Blogger blogs obtained 10 or lesser views.
“In the uncommon circumstances the place DRAGONBRIDGE content material did obtain engagement, it was virtually completely inauthentic, coming from different DRAGONBRIDGE accounts and never from real customers,” TAG stated. “Comment exercise was largely from different DRAGONBRIDGE accounts.”
The tech behemoth additionally identified that the coordinated inauthentic conduct was facilitated by leveraging Google Accounts bought in bulk from account sellers who create and promote such accounts for revenue, in some circumstances even reusing dormant accounts that have been beforehand utilized by different actors for mounting financially motivated campaigns.
“Despite their failure to realize traction with an genuine viewers, DRAGONBRIDGE generates excessive volumes of content material throughout a number of platforms, is persistent and continues to experiment of their techniques and strategies,” TAG stated.
DRAGONBRIDGE is way from the one pro-China info operation to have emerged in recent times. In August 2022, Mandiant disclosed a marketing campaign dubbed HaiEnergy that employed a community of inauthentic information websites and social media belongings to “reshape the worldwide picture of Xinjiang.”