recently,Microsoftreleased a report statingIranThe use of cyber influence operations andGenerative AI, intending to manipulate 2024President of the United StatesAccording to the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC), Iran’s cyber activities have been increasing since June this year, especially the influence operations against US targets are gradually taking shape, including network reconnaissance and infiltration of online people and websites.
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The report mentioned that there are multiple organizations in Iran involved in these activities. Among them, the organization called "Sefid Flood" has been preparing for influence operations since the Iranian New Year. Their strategy is mainly to impersonate social and political activists to create chaos and undermine public trust in the authorities. Another organization related to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, "Mint Sandstorm", carried out a phishing attack on a senior staff member of the presidential campaign in June. Such attacks also appeared during the 2020 election.
It is worth noting that Microsoft also discovered a network called "Storm-2035" that operates four fake news websites that specifically target voters with different political stances in the United States and spread highly divisive information about presidential candidates, LGBTQ rights, and the Ukrainian war. They also use AI services to plagiarize and rewrite content from American publications, and generate article titles and keywords through SEO plug-ins and other AI tools.
However, Microsoft pointed out that although these network actors have tried to use generative AI for content creation, their impact is actually limited, and many organizations have begun to turn to more traditional and effective means, such as simple digital operations, content misleading, and the use of credible labels or logos on false information. Therefore, fully automated political influence operations have not yet been achieved, and generative AI is more used to support and expand these activities.