Foreign actors are infiltrating social media accounts of U.S. veterans to sway elections and running petty scams, veterans and tech experts told lawmakers, Defense One reported.
The claims were made to the House Committee of Veterans Affairs on Wednesday, which points to online hackers from Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Macedonia gaining access to Facebook groups and other online forums by impersonating veterans they find online, according to the report.
"Since beginning our investigation, we've found and exposed election interference related to the 2020 presidential race by these foreign entities," chief investigator and associate director of policy and government affairs at the Vietnam Veterans of America, Kristofer Goldsmith said. "These criminals frequently steal veterans' deployment photos and use them to create online social media profiles. They then use those imposter profiles to enter online groups which are made for grieving Gold Star families."
The Facebook group "Vets for Trump" is run by a pair of Macedonians with ties to Russia who are under FBI investigation.
It has "110,000 Facebook followers, and while publishing vile racist, xenophobic, and islamophobic content, increased their following to around 131,000 followers. In this time, they posted disinformation regarding voter eligibility, attacked Democratic presidential candidates, and promoted the candidacy of President Donald Trump," according to Goldsmith.
"These operations are surgically precise, targeting influential people and organizations in the veteran community," Graphika Science Director Vlad Barash said, per the report. "Veterans-focused publications have unwittingly published articles authored by false personas created by foreign intelligence services."
"These operations show no signs of stopping," Barash added, pointing to Russia's Internet Research Agency, which is still increasing, since 2016.
Both Facebook and Twitter testified they are making strides in cracking down on election meddling scammers like those above, per Defense One.
"If, during this process, we detect that an account may be impersonating such an individual, we flag it for human review," head of security policy at Facebook Nathaniel Gleicher said, per the report. "We are still testing these processes, but they have helped us more quickly detect the creation of impostor accounts and remove them shortly after their creation, often before people even see them."
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