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FBI seizes Russian fake news domains
The FBI has seized 32 domain names it says were being used by Russian-government-backed interests to peddle fake news to influence the war in Ukraine and the upcoming US presidential elections.
The agency named three sanctioned Russian companies as the owners of the domains, which it said “covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections, including the U.S. 2024 Presidential Election”.
The FBI called the Russian campaign, which used cybersquatted domains such as fox-news.in and washingtonpost.pm as well as original creations such as waronfakes.com and vip-news.org, “Doppelganger”.
Eight domain registrars and registries have been told by a US court to redirect the domains in question to the FBI’s name servers, where they currently serve either a seizure notice, a placeholder, or counter-propaganda presented as news.
Identity Digital was told to grab the most domains — 11 in total, across .info, .media, .ltd, .agency and .io. Verisign was told to redirect six .com and .net names. Namecheap, as registrar, had to take action on six, in .org, .press and .us.
GoDaddy was told to seize three, in .co (as registrar) and .work (as registry). Domains at NameSilo and Tucows were also affected.
In one case, the FBI went after the Palau-based registry for forward.pw, and in another it went after Finland-based Sarek, the registrar for washingtonpost.pm.
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Dumbest propaganda ever. They are thinking that people are dumb as they. Nobody visits their fake sites
Oh, if only that was true.
Just have to look at your average phishing email… a lot of people fall for it still and they target those who don’t know better. Don’t understand how the internet works… and often in the case of fake news – have an active aversion to ‘MSM’ and blindly put more trust in no-name outlets because of it.