A Bugatti, a first lady and the fake stories aimed at Americans
www.bbc.com
A former US police officer runs an AI-powered network of misleading news sites turning its sights towards November.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/405394

A former Florida police officer who relocated to Moscow is one of the key figures behind it.

Dozens of bogus stories aimed at influencing US voters and sowing distrust ahead of November’s election. Some have been roundly ignored but others have been shared by influencers and members of the US Congress.

For example, one of these stories was published on a website called The Houston Post – one of dozens of sites with American-sounding names which are in reality run from Moscow - and alleged that the FBI illegally wiretapped Donald Trump’s Florida resort.

    • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      Nah. Our stupid ass government only recently started hiring hackers who smoke weed. But even then, there’s too much stupid red tape.

      “Both the NSA and the DOD have a ton of talented hackers, yet when it comes to actually performing disruptive cyber operations, for some reason we as a country are just frozen and scared,” Caceres says. “And that needs to change.”

      He points to ransomware actors, mostly based in Russia, who extracted more than a billion dollars of extortion fees from victim companies in 2023 while crippling hospitals and government agencies. North Korea–affiliated hackers, meanwhile, stole another $1 billion in cryptocurrency last year, funneling profits into the coffers of the Kim regime. All of that hacking against the West, he argues, has been carried out with relative impunity. “We sit there while they hack us,” Caceres says.

      https://www.wired.com/story/p4x-north-korea-internet-hacker-identity-reveal/

      And also

      It also doesn’t help that the Republican Party have outright praised Russia, which means they’re already inside.