Poll trolls' GCHQ script sock puppets manipulate muppets

A group of security professionals/online miscreants have found and themselves created thousands of online accounts to manipulate forum posts, popular news articles and mailing lists using techniques pioneered by the UK's GCHQ spy agency. Researchers Azhar Desa, Harron Meer and Marco Slaviero of Thinkst found posts created …

[Anonymous Coward]

AH HA!!!!

This explains why I get so many downvotes on certain posts.

OFF TOPIC

Could the BBC please stop the bullying of Iggle Piggle??

Every night it is :-

Wait a minute.

Someone's not in bed.

WHO's not in bed??

Iggle Piggle's not in bed.

Of COURSE he is not in bed, he sleeps in an effing dingy!!!!!

[dogged]

Re: AH HA!!!!

And he has serious cameltoe.

Next time, you'll see it and then you'll always see it.

I'm sick of suffering this alone.

[Castor]

Re: AH HA!!!!

>>And he has serious cameltoe.

Did you have to?

[dogged]

Re: AH HA!!!!

> Did you have to?

Yes, I really did.

I could have mentioned that he looks like David Cameron too if I'd been feeling really vindictive.

[Dick Pountain]

Re: AH HA!!!!

And one of the Hoo Haas has a most unsightly hydrocele too. The show is a urologists nightmare...

[Anonymous Blowhard]

I wish I was a real boy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that explains....

..some of the posts on here,

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Well that explains....

"that explains......some of the posts on here,"

Come off it, this is a haven of sanity, even including Amanfrommars' cryptic contributions. Look at the ignorant dribblings that dominate any newspaper comment pages.

[Vociferous]

Re: Well that explains....

"the ignorant dribblings that dominate any newspaper comment pages"

Yahoo is my favorite. I don't think any other site on the net is so heavily gamed. Go to Yahoo.co.uk and open the comment section on any story about Russia: it's drowned in Putinbots. Go to any story about crime in the UK, war in middle east, or which in any way vaguely is tied to race: it's drowned in UKIPpers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Well that explains....

The Indy's comments section has to be a close second. Who knew that you could drown in a sea of KIPpers?

[Vociferous]

Iran.

Reddit is heavily manipulated by Iran. Pick any story about Iran, go in the comments, and bask in the warm glow of 50-center support of their glorious country. You can check any pro-iranian commenters history, and >95% of posts are in defense of Iran or opposition to Israel/USA. There are hundreds of accounts like that.

Not that this is in any way news or an iranian invention. Scripting fake support for a cause was really brought to the fore by the Paultards back in 2008; there wasn't a message board or online poll which didn't get swarmed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Iran.

Yes, I'm sure they do... more crudely probably than Israel, USA and UK do it. Also makes you wonder whether GCHQ 'you have nothing to hid' shills are real or not...

[Vociferous]

Re: Iran.

Yeah, Israel is well represented on Reddit. You can see that there are several accounts which are never used for anything but to defend/deflect negative stories about Israel. They're dwarfed by the Iranians and Russians, though. There's also a few North Korean defenders, but in that case it's probably just deluded westerners, not 50 centers.

I've not seen anything resembling that on stories about the UK, so either the GCHQ is extremely subtle, or they've got better things to do than propagandize on Reddit & Yahoo.

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

Re: Iran.

I've not seen anything resembling that on stories about the UK, so either the GCHQ is extremely subtle, or they've got better things to do than propagandize on Reddit & Yahoo.

Nah, they just don't have anyone who can put a bash script together so they bought a commercial tool to do it. It's built by Microsoft on top of an Oracle db, so it can only post a vote or a comment every 49 minutes (and sometimes the vote is in the wrong direction).

[Hans 1]

Re: Iran.

> It's built by Microsoft on top of an Oracle db, so it can only post a vote or a comment every 49 minutes (and sometimes the vote is in the wrong direction).

Oracle is not a Microsoft product, so I guess you mean MS SQL Server which makes far more sense, really.

[142]

Re: Iran.

> I've not seen anything resembling that on stories about the UK, so either the GCHQ is extremely subtle, or they've got better things to do than propagandize on Reddit & Yahoo.

I've noticed the same. I wonder is there a third option: propaganda is harder to notice when it's close to home?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Iran.

You can see that there are several accounts which are never used for anything but to defend/deflect negative stories about Israel

Ah, I thought it felt familiar. The same tactic exists here for negative stories about Google and Microsoft.

[Destroy All Monsters]

"Stop and Thinkst"

Thou hast no spelling reviewer, sad monk?

[nematoad]

"Unsurprisingly the email with sock puppet replies peaked the interest of humans ...

Yes, a definite lack, not of a spell checker but of proof reading.

It should be: "Unsurprisingly the email with sock puppet replies piqued the interest of humans ...

Just because it's in the dictionary doesn't mean it's the right word.

[Tony Haines]

Where is stealth mountain when you need it?

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

Don't wind me up, that puts the wind right up me.

[flayman]

Isn't this this sort of social engineering that the Chinese government does, which our hacker spies are now admitting to?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Isn't this this sort of social engineering that the Chinese government does, which our hacker spies are now admitting to?"

Yes, but as usual government are behind the times. This is no different from things companies have been doing for years. "Digital" departments seeking to build up Facebook friends, sales departments seeking to manipulate search engine rankings, or marketing departments seeking to buy their way up the "most respected brands" listings. Or HR departments seeking to pretend their company is a great place to work.

For many years government manipulated the media directly, in the UK it used to be "D notices". They probably used those to keep the press quiet about all the kiddy diddlers in the establishment, for example. Those don't work with the internet (although Cameron thinks the internet needs more government "help"), so the next best thing is to try and pretend that opposing opinion is less popular, or that your own views have some following. And in the Westminster/Washington/Moscow/Beijing bubble, fiddling the figures counts for success, whether that be output figures, unemployment, inflation, debt, or public opinion.

[Michael Wojcik]

Isn't this this sort of social engineering that the Chinese government does, which our hacker spies are now admitting to?

Welcome to the 1980s, when sock-puppetting on online forums became too common to be remarkable. Even Wired magazine covered the phenomenon in '96, and they're usually a couple of decades behind the curve. (Why are all those kids on my lawn?)

Personally, I miss the days when some 'bots were memorable enough to become famous, like Serdar Argic.

All that's really changed is that we now have better algorithms and more computing power to devote to fully automating the bots. For many attackers, though, it's just as economical to have people do it, whether they're cheap labor, motivated by ideology, or rewarded in some other fashion.

[David Pollard]

Isn't this ...?

Does the Behavioural Insights Team, a.k.a. the Nudge Unit, go in for this sort of thing? Their Wiki entry makes fascinating reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioural_Insights_Team

[Joey Mousepad]

Insert_Title

Well I for one, [..\body.txt not found]

[Clamps]

Re: Insert_Title

Hi Joey, Am i talking to myselfs here or what?

[The Vociferous Time Waster]

Certain regional news sites

certain regional news sites use a CMS that has an easily gamed 'most read' widget.

It doesn't use cookies or check browser versions or even look at unique IP addresses. All you need to do is loop a few times in a bash script to wget the page (minus all the chrome) to /dev/null and your favourite local cheese baking story or village fete shenanigans can sit at the top of the most read widget for as long as you like.

[Dick Pountain]

I'm saving the headline to this article as a test piece for my natural language parsing code efforts: it defeated me so how can a poor computer cope?

[Hans 1]

Microsoft has an entire army of bots on this site defending its bs solutions - that is why i now provide reproducible examples. Note that they still cannot read or accept defeat, I still get down-votes, at least I can now see who is human and who is bot.