🔉📱#OpTenggara roundup #4
Cyber attacks in Cambodia and Thailand; Islamist influence network in Indonesia; Southeast Asia's 'influence-for-hire' industry
#OpTenggara is a monthly roundup of news relating to information operations, disinformation, malign interference, influence campaigns, and general grey zone activity in Southeast Asia. Hope you enjoy reading it!
🇰🇭 Cambodia
Cambodian hackers launch cyber attacks on Thai websites
A group of hackers purportedly from Cambodia claimed to have launched multiple cyber attacks on websites in Thailand throughout July. Their campaign, titled #OpThailand, saw three hacker groups–Anonymous Cambodia, K0lzSec and NDT SEC–launch what appear to have been distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against the websites of Thai airports, banks and a range of government and royal institutions, including the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Thai Ministry of Defence. A post by one of the groups said the attacks were launched because Thailand had “copied” Cambodia culture, by building similar structures to the Cambodian temple of Angkor Wat.
🇮🇩 Indonesia
Islamist influence network targets controversial Islamic school
The Muslim Cyber Army (MCA), a loosely organised Islamist network of accounts on social media that has previously been identified as spreading hate speech and misinformation, recently highlighted Al Zaytun Islamic school in West Java, which has recently been placed under government investigation for allegedly deviating from Islamic teachings by allowing mixed-gender prayers. MCA published a post on X (formerly Twitter) highlighting a quote from Abu Somad, an Indonesian preacher who has previously been denied entry to Singapore for his extremist views, which claimed the leader of Al-Zaytun was a “Jewish henchman”. MCA has a significant reach of 222k followers on X, with its specific post on Al-Zaytun being viewed almost 23k times.
🇵🇭 Philippines
Report charts evolving disinformation environment
A new report by Internews examines the evolution of disinformation in the Philippines across three electoral cycles in the country. The report notes how disinformation in the country has developed to the point where it is supplied by a “savvy information media-fantasy complex” that produces mainstream and micro-targeted political commentary, entertainment productions, and lifestyle events and programming. It also notes the layered nature of disinformation operations, with disinformation influencers producing content for their fans across platforms while the architects of disinformation architects from the country’s elites “strategize behind the scenes” and receive the most significant political and financial rewards. At the same time, the report notes how efforts to counter disinformation have also evolved, with there now being more interest from civil society to improve the country’s information environment.
🇹🇭 Thailand
Report notes Thai media’s disinformation risks
A report by the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) flagged disinformation risks in Thailand relating to the country’s media environment. The report is based on a study of 33 news domains in Thailand, with nearly half of these domains classed by GDI as having a “high-to-maximum risk” of disinforming their online users. GDI said these sites rarely used clear bylines or identified news sources, and provided only vague attribution policies. The report noted that the sites had significant room for improvement in areas such as ensuring accuracy through fact-checking processes, source identification, byline policies, and outlining funding and editorial guidelines.
Thailand a prime target for cyber attacks, research says
Thailand has been pummelled with cyber attacks in recent months, characterised by assailants using evasive tactics, hacktivism-based attacks and daily barrages of ransomware that has targeted organisations in the country. An investigation by Check Point Research, a cybersecurity firm, claimed that the average number of cyber-attacks on organisations in Thailand was almost double the average rate globally and slightly higher than the average within Southeast Asia over the past six months. The firm said Thai organisations were attacked 2,388 times per week on average during the last six months, compared with 2,375 attacks per week in the rest of Southeast Asia.
🌏 Regional
China exploiting influence-for-hire industry in Southeast Asia, says report
An investigation by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) claims to provide new evidence of an influence-for-hire industry operating in Southeast Asia, linked to the Communist Party of China (CCP). The report suggests the CCP is using inauthentic accounts on social media that are linked to transnational criminal organisations, to spread disinformation campaigns. It traces a network of CCP-linked fake accounts that have promoted the Warner International Casino, based in northern Myanmar near the border with China’s Yunnan Province. The casino has reportedly been operated by overseas gang members who were smuggling Chinese citizens into Myanmar to participate in illegal gambling.
ASPI notes how the CCP has a history of engaging with criminal organisations to attain its political goals, and says that it is entirely possible that elements of China’s security services are opportunistically acquiring inauthentic accounts from criminal networks such as Warner International, to reinforce their covert influence operations online. Another explanation, according to ASPI, is that the CCP’s security agencies are expanding their outsourcing of private contractors who they employ to maintain the CCP’s global information operations.