Identified at the end of 2022 by Meta, publicly denounced by the French government in mid-June, under European sanctions since the end of July… but all the same still active: the Russian disinformation operation “Döppelganger” continues to seek to spread false information about the war in Ukraine in the West, claims Meta in its latest security report, published on Tuesday, August 29.
The Russian campaign, called “RRN” by the French services, had already cloned the sites of the Worldof Parisianof Releaseof 20 minutesof The cross or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the summer, “Döppelganger” continued to create these counterfeits and even widened its targets, beginning to copy American media sites, including those of Fox News and the washington post, as well as that of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In addition, fake accounts continue to be created on Facebook in an attempt to display advertisements there containing “Döppelganger” messages.
“It is the most aggressive Russian operation in its persistence that we have seen since 2017”, writes Meta, who believes that to effectively dismantle these campaigns, it is necessary to change the rules of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), the organization that manages domain names. Most disinformation campaigns now rely on dedicated websites, the company notes, and deleting their social media accounts is helpful but insufficient. In particular, Meta recommends imposing restrictions on the creation of domain names using sensitive terms, such as “connection” or “security”, and the adoption of laws setting out strict obligations to control the contact information provided during creation. of a domain name.