JERUSALEM (AP) An Israeli firm sought to influence more than 30 elections around the world for clients by hacking, sabotage and spreading disinformation, according to an undercover media investigation published Wednesday.
It adds to a growing body of evidence that shadowy private firms across the world are profiting from invasive hacking tools and the power of social media platforms to manipulate public opinion.
The firm was dubbed “Team Jorge” by investigating journalists who posed as potential clients in order to gather information on its methods and capabilities.
Its boss, Tal Hanan, is a former Israeli special forces operative who boasted of being able to control supposedly secure Telegram accounts and thousands of fake social media profiles, as well as planting news stories, the reports say.
The investigation was carried out by a consortium of journalists from 30 outlets, including the Guardian in Britain, Le Monde in France, Der Spiegel in Germany and El Pais in Spain, under the direction of the France-based non-profit Forbidden Stories. “The methods and techniques described by Team Jorge pose new challenges for large-scale technology platforms,” wrote The Guardian.
“Evidence of a global private market for election-targeted disinformation will also sound alarm bells for democracies around the world.”
Mr. Hanan did not answer detailed questions, he simply replied:
“I deny any wrongdoing.”
The 50-year-old told his three undercover reporters that his services are often referred to in the industry as “black ops” and are available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns and private companies.
“We are currently involved in elections in Africa…we have a team in Greece, we have a team in the Emirates…[we] have completed 33 presidential-level election campaigns and Of those, 27 were successful,” the Guardian quoted him as saying. He claimed that most of the campaign (two-thirds) took place in Africa.
While demonstrating his technology to reporters, he appeared to hack into the political activist’s Gmail inbox and his Telegram account days before Kenya’s presidential election.
Forbidden Stories named Target as his two backers to William Ruto, who ultimately won his August 2022 election.
The online poll campaign was conducted through his platform of software called Advanced Impact Media Solutions, which allegedly controlled nearly 40,000 of his social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, according to the report.
Hannan also claimed that his company had published a report on France’s largest television news channel, BFM, about the impact of sanctions against Russia on Monaco’s yacht industry. Senior Channel Host Rachid M’Barki, 54, has been suspended and is under investigation.
public influence
In recent years, other similar companies have been named in media reports and sanctioned by Western governments for their role in trying to influence elections and public opinion.
Since its closure, notorious British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica was allegedly used to develop software to direct voters to Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election.
The group collected and misused the personal information of his 87 million Facebook users that the platform granted access to, resulting in hefty fines and lawsuits.
On Tuesday, Evgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, admitted to setting up a notorious vandal farm. The Washington-Brussels-sanctioned Internet research institute based in St. Petersburg has for years been associated with Prigozhin, a 61-year-old ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It highlighted how the powerful Israeli-made Pegasus spyware was sold to the government and used by cyber intelligence firm NSO Group Technologies.
