From cyber bases to the dissemination of security news
The journey of cyber activities in the virtual space
From cyber bases to the dissemination of internet security news, it has become one of the essential needs of life these days. From online stores to entertainment pages and news dissemination. If you have been active on Twitter before, you have definitely seen that everyone with any political view tweets from news websites and domestic accounts to personal pages belonging to supporters and advocates of the government.
So far, everything is normal, but things get strange when there are accounts that support the Islamic Republic and a specific movement, like the Stability movement, tweeting fiercely. Most of these tweets are in full support and praise of the government. A significant portion of these accounts operate under fake identities, and even their profile pictures do not belong to them.
The story becomes terrifying when these accounts are controlled by cyber bases and have a considerable budget. The main activity of these base accounts is to form Twitter teams. They do this by creating a group on Telegram or one of the Iranian messaging apps like Eitaa, and inviting like-minded individuals to join that group.
The way these individuals become familiar with these cyber teams is also as follows: several accounts send a single tweet to join the group, and the accounts that are interested in joining send a message to the account owner. They then join the group. Now it’s time to benefit from the created teams. They send their tweets to these groups, and all group members, even without reading the tweet, retweet, like, and comment on it.
Activity on Twitter is only a part of cyber bases’ activities. For example, there are many channels with the name of ‘Jihad Tabayan’ on messaging apps like Eitaa and even Telegram, which regularly produce content and attract new members. Cyber bases even have access to media outlets. In Telegram, there are channels like ‘Baseemchi’, ‘Media Secret’, ‘Online Radar’, and others, which belong to these bases.
An important point to note is that sometimes these channels publish news and photos that are only available to security institutions. For example, a few minutes after the arrest of Mehdi Yarahi, a Telegram channel named ‘Ayoun’ published photos of the moment of his arrest. The publication of these photos had various reactions, to the extent that the head of the judiciary, without directly referring to this incident, stated that publishing photos of the moment of arrest of a suspect without the judge’s permission is against the law.
What’s even stranger is that almost two weeks after these photos were released, the Telegram channel ‘Eyes Forever’ was closed. It’s almost never clear which organization these channels are affiliated with, but their behavioral patterns are the same. For example, they are very aggressive and demand harsh treatment of all protesters, and they do not tolerate any criticism.
Another characteristic of their behavior is file-making. For instance, they publish a tweet from a journalist who is inside the country and without any evidence or documentation, they accuse that person of espionage, and there is no response from the judiciary or security institutions towards them.
In conclusion, it must be said that users need to be extremely cautious about cyber activities, as these individuals can easily spread fake news and deceive the audience through the power they have in the virtual space.
Persian
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