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Cyber based influence campaigns 28th September – 4th October 2026 Report

Writer: CRC
CRC
5 hours ago
28 min read
Cover Image- Text: Weekly Media Update: Information Operations


[Introduction]


Cyber-based hostile influence campaigns are aimed at influencing target audiences by promoting information and/or disinformation over the internet, sometimes combined with cyber-attacks which enhance their effect (hence force Cyfluence, as opposed to cyber-attacks that aim to steal information, extort money, etc.) Such hostile influence campaigns and operations can be considered an epistemological branch of Information Operations (IO) or Information Warfare (IW).

Typically, and as customary during the last decade, the information is spread throughout various internet platforms, which are the different elements of the hostile influence campaign, and as such, connectivity and repetitiveness of content between several elements are the main core characteristics of influence campaigns. 

Hostile influence campaigns, much like Cyber-attacks, have also become a tool for rival nations and corporations to damage reputation or achieve various business, political or ideological goals. Much like in the cyber security arena, PR professionals and government agencies are responding to negative publicity and disinformation shared over the news and social media. 

We use the term cyber based hostile influence campaigns, as we include in this definition also cyber-attacks aimed at influencing (such as hack and leak during election time), while we exclude of this term other types of more traditional kinds of influence such as diplomatic, economic, military etc.

During the September 28th - October 4th 2026, we observed, collected and analyzed endpoints of information related to cyber based hostile influence campaigns (including Cyfluence attacks). The following report is a summary of what we regard as the main events. Some of the mentioned campaigns have to do with social media and news outlets solemnly, while others leverage cyber-attack capabilities.



[Contents]




Tiktok


Russia 


China


Iran


Cyflunce Attack






[ Report Highlights]


  • NewsGuard found that Russian fake reports impersonating established media outlets rose 850 percent, from 44 to 421, between the first halves of 2025 and 2026.


  • DFRLab traced a fabricated Politico claim that the EU rejected Armenian tomatoes, first seen on a Russian Telegram channel and spread in eighteen languages within 29 hours.


  • Russian channels used draft notices and an apparently AI-generated poster to falsely claim that Ukraine is forcibly mobilizing women, Ukrinform reports.


  • At least 25,000 X posts in the 48 hours after the Flydubai incident pushed conspiracy narratives, including claims blaming Jews or alleging a 'false flag', according to ADL.


  • A deepfake BBC News clip with AI-generated audio was used to claim a secret India-Mossad plot behind the Flydubai incident, NewsGuard found.


  • RSF warns that influencers with ties to Chinese state entities are reaching large Greek audiences without disclosing those links.


  • Microsoft reports that Iranian state-linked campaigns increasingly combine cyberattacks, military action and influence operations, with Israel the target of 39 percent of Tehran-linked activity.


  • Leading AI chatbots cited secretly partisan 'pink slime' news sites 48 percent of the time when asked about midterm topics, a NewsGuard study found.

[ Report Summary]

  • NewsGuard reports that Courier Newsroom, which it labels partisan 'pink slime', has built 4.3 million TikTok followers without disclosing its Democratic-aligned funding.

  • NewsGuard found that fake reports by Russian influence operations impersonating established media outlets rose from 44 to 421 between the first halves of 2025 and 2026.

  • DFRLab and CivilNet traced a coordinated pro-Kremlin campaign that falsely credited Politico with reporting that the EU had rejected Armenian tomatoes.

  • Putin decorated 51 employees of state broadcaster Channel One, including a correspondent and a commentator whose reports The Insider had previously debunked as false.

  • Ukrinform debunks Russian claims that Ukraine is mass-mobilizing women, noting that one circulating poster image bore signs of AI generation.

  • StopFake found that pro-Russian posts claiming mass arrests of Ukrainians for siphoning petrol in Paris relied on forged French media headlines.

  • StopFake rebuts Russian claims that State Duma voting in occupied Ukraine was legitimate, citing international law, coercive conditions and pro-Kremlin 'observers'.

  • Detector Media documented TikTok accounts posting AI-generated videos imitating Ukrainian officials to discredit mobilization; one account's most popular video was viewed over 740,000 times.

  • RSF warns that influencers with ties to Chinese state entities are reaching large Greek audiences through lifestyle pages that mix in pro-Beijing political messaging.

  • The Armed Forces of the Philippines said indications point to possible Chinese Communist Party involvement in a fake letter using Defense Secretary Teodoro's name.

  • A Media Line analysis, citing Iraq's Shafaq News, reports that Iran's Fars News Agency placed the Flydubai incident alongside an alleged Israeli false-flag plot without presenting evidence.

  • Bellingcat found that widely shared 'updated' Google imagery of Gaza dated from February 2026, while newer Planet Labs images show demolitions have continued.

  • ADL found that at least 25,000 X posts in the 48 hours after the Flydubai incident pushed conspiracy narratives, including claims blaming Jews or alleging a 'false flag'.

  • Microsoft's annual cyber defense report finds Israel was the leading target of Iranian cyber activity, with campaigns increasingly converging hacking, military action and influence operations.

  • A NewsGuard study found leading AI chatbots cited secretly partisan 'pink slime' sites 48 percent of the time when asked about midterm topics those sites cover.

  • A University of Denver AI policy scholar finds most US state election deepfake laws require only disclosure labels, which may not stop fabricated content reaching voters.

  • EDMO reports a September wave of pro-Russian AI-generated videos depicting forced mobilization of Ukrainian soldiers, recirculated in several European countries with translated subtitles.

  • NewsGuard found that claims of a secret India-Mossad plot behind the Flydubai incident were bolstered by a deepfake BBC News clip with AI-generated audio.

  • Research presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics national conference found that TikTok misinformation on acetaminophen and autism drew more views than evidence-based videos, despite being fewer.

  • Egyptian security forces detained all six editorial staff of the fact-checking outlet Matsada2sh, which the Interior Ministry accuses of spreading false news.

  • Researchers found Facebook ads linking to reliable information drew more clicks when worded in the style of Australian communities that share misinformation.

  • Vietnamese residents and advocates in Japan describe growing mistrust amid viral videos and false narratives about foreign nationals as immigration politics harden.

  • The European Centre for Democratic Resilience launched the first phase of a platform linking fact-checkers, researchers and civil society to its counter-disinformation work.

  • GPTZero's detector classified 203 of 1,267 speeches at the 81st UN General Assembly as AI-generated, accounting for 19.4 percent of the words spoken.

  • Google updated its content guidelines to describe fabricated author profiles, including AI-generated headshots and false credentials, as deception and a low-quality signal.

  • Poland has introduced a Centre for Combating Disinformation to operate under its Ministry of Digital Affairs, to coordinate state agencies and expose false narratives.

  • RSF urged the EU to renew funding for its Svoboda satellite package, which carries around 15 Russian-language channels to audiences in Russia, Belarus and occupied Ukraine.

[State Actors]



TikTok

Undisclosed Partisan News Network Builds Large TikTok Audience

An analysis published by NewsGuard's Reality Check states that Courier Newsroom, a network of 20 state-focused news sites that NewsGuard labels 'pink slime', is making a major bet on TikTok ahead of the US midterms. Across 21 TikTok accounts, one for each state it covers plus a national account, Courier has gathered 4.3 million followers and 665.5 million likes, and its national account alone has 3.7 million followers, more than the Washington Post's 2.1 million.


NewsGuard defines pink slime as sites that present themselves as professional news outlets while being secretly backed by partisan groups with an undisclosed agenda. It cites tax and election filings showing Courier received $13.6 million from Future Forward USA Action in 2024, $5 million in 2024 from a nonprofit previously led by Democratic donor George Soros, and a $2.5 million payment from ActBlue in December 2025, none of which is disclosed on Courier's websites or its TikTok accounts, which describe themselves in apolitical terms. Courier did not immediately respond to NewsGuard's request for comment, and TikTok's media office did not respond.


Source: NewsGuard’s Reality Check. Partisan Pink Slime Network Weaponizes TikTok. [online] Available at: https://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/p/partisan-pink-slime-network-weaponizes


Russia

Russian Fakes Mimicking Trusted Media Brands Surge 850 Percent

An analysis published by NewsGuard's Reality Check states that since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian influence operations have produced 906 fake news reports mimicking 163 established media outlets, and that the number rose from 44 in the first half of 2025 to 421 in the first half of 2026, an 850 percent jump. Targeted brands range from the BBC, Politico, Bloomberg News and Euronews to The Kyiv Independent, The Yorkshire Post and La Montagne, with the campaigns hijacking logos and layouts, sometimes using look-alike URLs, and often inserting invented quotes from real subject experts.


NewsGuard attributes most of these fakes to two Russian-government-linked campaigns: Matryoshka, which often produces around a dozen lower-quality fake video reports a day distributed through X and Telegram, and Storm-1516, which is less prolific but builds elaborate narratives spread through networks of X accounts, often gaining tens of millions of views. After Ukraine, France and Germany are the countries most often targeted, and NewsGuard argues that artificial intelligence now lets such forgeries be produced quickly and at scale, making false claims more convincing while undermining trust in credible media.


Source: NewsGuard’s Reality Check. Russia Hijacks Trusted Media Brands. [online] Available at: https://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/p/russia-hijacks-trusted-media-brands


Fake Politico Claim Said EU Rejected Armenian Tomatoes

A report published by the DFRLab states that in July 2026, as Armenian farmers protested over difficulties selling their produce, a fabricated claim that Politico had reported an EU rejection of Armenian tomato imports spread across Telegram, X, Facebook and VK, although it was Russia that had embargoed Armenian agricultural products at the end of May and the EU that opened its market to them. Analysing over 380 original posts published between July 22nd to 30th, 2026, together with CivilNet, the DFRLab found that the earliest post identified in the dataset came from the Russian-language Telegram channel @indeec_1937 and that the claim reached eighteen languages within 29 hours, with more than half of the posts appearing on July 23rd, 2026.


The DFRLab cites at least four indicators of coordinated, inauthentic amplification: very rapid spread, word-for-word identical text across unrelated assets, automated posting, and the rapid distribution of the story in multiple languages, which points to centralised translation. On X, 74 of the accounts sharing the claim had a documented history of amplifying campaigns the DFRLab attributes to Storm-1516, and the researchers conclude that the most durable finding is that the mirror sites, automated translation channels, and posting clusters existed before the story and kept operating after it ended.


Source: Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab). Russia Banned Armenian Tomatoes. A Fake Politico Story Blamed Europe. [online] Published 29 September 2026. Available at: https://dfrlab.org/2026/09/29/russia-banned-armenian-tomatoes-a-fake-politico-story-blamed-europe/ 


Putin Decorates Channel One Staff Behind Debunked Reports

An article published by The Insider states that a decree dated September 29th, 2026, granted Russian state honours to 51 employees of state-run Channel One (Pervy Kanal), among them propagandists whose reports The Insider had previously debunked as false. Correspondent Ivan Blagoy, author of the 2016 report on 'Lisa', a girl in Germany allegedly abducted and sexually assaulted by immigrants, which German police later established had not happened, received the Order of Friendship, while commentator Kirill Brainin, whose reports on the Skripal poisoning and on a claim that Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite had cooperated with the KGB were repeatedly debunked, received the Order of Honor.


The list also includes Dimitri Simes, host of The Great Game, who faces US charges of violating sanctions and money laundering over allegations that he kept working for Channel One after US sanctions on the network, and Vremya anchor Yekaterina Berezovskaya, who in March 2022 presented a group visiting Russian-occupied Ukraine as Western journalists; The Insider later found the group included a pro-Kremlin activist and an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. It was the second mass award to the network's staff that month, after a decree of September 3rd, 2026, honoured another 28 employees.


Source: The Insider. Putin hands out state honors to 51 Channel One employees, including sanctioned propagandists and authors of fake news reports. [online] Available at: https://theins.press/en/news/297724


Likely AI-Generated Poster Used in Fake Women's Mobilisation Claims

An article published by Ukrinform states that Russian media, Telegram channels and bots on X are circulating photos of purported recruitment advertisements and draft notices to claim that women across Ukraine, particularly in Kyiv and Kharkiv, are being mobilised en masse. One citylight poster showing a woman with a baby and an assault rifle bears signs of AI generation, which the Hive Moderation service assessed at a 99 percent likelihood. In contrast, another poster was genuine but belonged to a recruitment campaign held in March 2026 that had nothing to do with forced mobilisation.


Andrii Podik, head of communications for the Ukrainian Ground Forces, said there was no question of forced mobilisation of women and that joining the military is voluntary, and Ukrinform notes that the 'draft notices' contradict the mass-mailing claim because one lacks the QR code required for postal delivery. One of the earliest sources to circulate the photos was the Russian X account 'Donbass Segodnya' on 24-09-2026, and they entered Ukraine's information space notably via the pro-Russian 'Budni Ukhilyanta' page; Ukrinform says propagandists use the fake to push a narrative of 'huge losses' at the front and to spread panic.


Source: Ukrinform. Russia Spreads Fake Claims About Mass Forced Mobilization of Women in Ukraine. [online] Available at: https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-factcheck/4170138-russia-spreads-fake-claims-about-mass-forced-mobilization-of-women-in-ukraine.html


Forged French Headlines Accuse Ukrainians of Paris Fuel Theft

An article published by StopFake states that pro-Russian corners of the internet are circulating a story that 12 Ukrainian citizens were arrested in Paris for siphoning gasoline from other people's cars and trying to sell it below market price, with other posts putting the number at 390 or even 650 and citing screenshots of supposed French media headlines such as 'The new face of migration'. StopFake found that La Montagne and ICI never published articles with those headlines, that searches turned up no such stories in any open source, and that neither French police nor any other law enforcement agency has reported such incidents.


StopFake argues that the choice of fuel was no accident: France has been one of the EU economies hardest hit by the fuel crisis that followed the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, spending an extra €10.8 billion on fuel imports between March and August 2026, and President Emmanuel Macron pledged on September 24th, 2026, not to let prices soar. Propagandists, it concludes, seized on a topical and painful issue to smear Ukrainians abroad, repeating a technique of fabricated French media reports that StopFake has debunked before.


Source: StopFake. Fake: Ukrainians Arrested En Masse in Paris for Stealing Gasoline. [online] Available at: https://www.stopfake.org/en/fake-ukrainians-arrested-en-masse-in-paris-for-stealing-gasoline/


AI-Generated TikTok Videos Target Ukrainian Officials and Mobilisation

A report published by Detector Media states that between September 23rd to 29th, 2026, its analysts documented 11 Russian disinformation narratives, including a TikTok account, @zafedorova, that systematically publishes AI-generated videos while using an image of Mykhailo Fedorov, who has no connection to it. The account posted fake 'street polls' about mobilization and videos imitating Ukrainian officials, among them a generated character at the Verkhovna Rada rostrum with a voice resembling parliamentary speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk, before shifting to generated 'interviews' in which fictional characters spoke of plans to 'settle Uman', reproducing an antisemitic narrative; its most popular video was viewed more than 740,000 times.


Two further TikTok accounts, 'Speeches in the Rada' and 'TCC Podcast', posted AI-generated videos of fictional, caricatured obese MPs and military and recruitment officials to suggest a 'gluttonous government', and the eight videos analyzed gained millions of views although the accounts have only a few thousand followers combined; most were not labelled as AI. Detector Media asked TikTok to label and remove the videos and also documents an AI-generated 'brochure' attributed to Lviv's regional perinatal center urging women not to speak Russian during childbirth, which carried a SynthID watermark identifying AI-generated images.


Source: Detector Media. Overview of Russian Fake News from September 23–29, 2026. [online] Available at: https://en.detector.media/post/overview-of-russian-fake-news-from-september-23-29-2026


StopFake Rejects Claims That Occupied-Territory Duma Vote Was Legitimate

An article published by StopFake states that Russian media and Telegram channels are presenting State Duma 'elections' held from September 18th to 20th, 2026, in Ukraine's occupied territories as legitimate, citing official turnout of 82.14 percent in the occupied part of Donetsk region and 79.34 percent in Luhansk region and the presence of 1,126 'foreign observers and experts' from 130 countries. StopFake calls these claims baseless, noting that the 1907 Hague Regulations and the Fourth Geneva Convention bar an occupying power from changing a territory's legal status, that ODIHR and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly said the results will have no validity under international law, and that the EU says it will never recognise the vote or its results.


StopFake adds that early voting was conducted mostly by mobile teams going door to door, which Radio Svoboda reports were accompanied in frontline areas by armed men in unmarked camouflage, and that the OSCE again could not observe the process. According to Vilne Radio, cited by StopFake, the 'international observers' included CIS delegations and people with openly pro-Russian views, among them German blogger Thomas Röper, sanctioned by the EU in May 2025, while Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation said inviting loyal foreigners served to create the appearance of international recognition.


Source: StopFake. Fake: State Duma Elections in Ukraine’s Occupied Territories Are Legitimate. [online] Available at: https://www.stopfake.org/en/fake-state-duma-elections-in-ukraine-s-occupied-territories-are-legitimate/


China

RSF Warns of CCP-Linked Influencers on Greek Social Media

A report published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) states that the Chinese Communist Party is quietly cultivating a network of influencers to amplify its narrative on Greek social media, citing an investigation by Greece Fact Check into three Greek-language pages, Sweet Hope, Marianna's Diary and Iro Li's page, which have a combined following of over 455,000 across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Greece Fact Check found that Iro Li's page is sponsored by a subsidiary of state broadcaster CCTV and that Meta's Ad Library lists a major Chinese advertising distributor as advertiser and payer for the other two pages. All three appear to be independent lifestyle pages until they begin introducing more explicitly political messages.


Greece Fact Check did not find direct evidence that the influencers knowingly took part in a broad propaganda operation, and its founder Thanos Sitistas said much of the material did not rely on outright falsehoods; RSF notes that politically sensitive subjects were handled through omission and selective presentation, for example by portraying Uyghur residents of Xinjiang as happy and prosperous while omitting documented allegations of mass detention. Sitistas called the evidence of coordination strong, with Greece Fact Check's report counting 47 administrators and 227 advertisements between 2021 and 2023, and RSF calls on Greek authorities to investigate the financial flows linking these influencers to Chinese propaganda networks.


Source: Reporters Without Borders (RSF). China’s Quiet Influence Campaign on Greek Social Media. [online] Available at: https://rsf.org/en/china-s-quiet-influence-campaign-greek-social-media


Philippine Military Sees Possible CCP Hand in Fake Teodoro Letter

An article published by Brigada News states that the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said the Chinese Communist Party may be behind the circulation of a fake letter using the name of Department of National Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. AFP spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea, Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, said indications are pointing to the possible involvement of the CCP, potentially with the participation of some Filipinos.


Trinidad said the document may have been intended to damage the reputation of government officials and weaken the alliance between the Philippines and the United States, and the letter contained statements on maritime law enforcement in the West Philippine Sea and on political issues in the country. The Department of National Defense had earlier denied the letter, saying it was fake and had no basis in fact, and referred the matter to the National Bureau of Investigation.


Source: Brigada News Philippines. Chinese Communist Party Possibly Behind Fake Letter Using DND Chief’s Name — AFP. [online] Available at: https://www.brigadanews.ph/chinese-communist-party-possibly-behind-fake-letter-using-dnd-chiefs-name-afp


Iran

Iran's Fars Placed Flydubai Incident Beside Unproven Israeli Plot Claim

An analysis published by Ynetnews, reprinted from The Media Line, states that after Flydubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv descended sharply, transmitted emergency codes, and diverted to Tabuk in Saudi Arabia, Arabic- and Farsi-language outlets began with the same basic facts but quickly diverged. Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency went furthest; according to Iraq's Shafaq News, Fars cited Iranian security agencies claiming Iran had obtained intelligence suggesting Israel was considering an attack on an aircraft or airport in the region that could be blamed on Tehran and placed that allegation alongside the diversion of the flight.


The analysis stresses that Fars presented no evidence linking the Flydubai incident to its allegation and that no independently verifiable evidence of Israeli responsibility has emerged, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the co-pilot stabbed the pilot and tried to crash the aircraft. By contrast, Gulf outlets Al-Bayan and Akhbaar24 stayed close to airline statements, and Al Jazeera reconstructed the flight from tracking data, showing how, within hours, the same flight was framed as an aviation emergency, a suspected terror attack or, in some Iranian coverage, part of the Israel-Iran confrontation.


Source: Ynetnews. From hijacking alert to false-flag claims: How Arab and Iranian outlets framed the Flydubai incident. [online] Available at: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bk000lwiqzg


ADL Finds At Least 25,000 Flydubai Conspiracy Posts on X

An analysis published by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) states that after a Flydubai flight to Israel made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on September 30th, 2026, following what eyewitnesses described as an attempted hijacking, conspiracy theories blaming Jews or alleging a 'false flag' quickly began to circulate. ADL analysis found that at least 25,000 posts about the incident on X in the first 48 hours included conspiracy theory narratives, excluding posts that merely commented on the incident or the trend.


ADL notes that influencers across the political spectrum contributed, including The Young Turks host Ana Kasparian, who called the story 'super fishy' while saying she could not be certain it was a false flag, white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who called it 'false flag terrorism', and American Communist Party co-founder Jackson Hinkle, whose post theorising that Netanyahu orchestrated the incident was reposted 17,000 times. ADL argues that antisemitic conspiracy theories often circulate in times of uncertainty or after news events with murky details, and says incidents with conspiracy elements in its annual audit have stayed consistently high.


Source: Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Within 48 Hours of Flydubai Incident, at Least 25,000 X Posts Pushed Conspiracy Theories. [online] Available at: https://www.adl.org/resources/article/within-48-hours-flydubai-incident-least-25000-x-posts-pushed-conspiracy-theories


Cyfluence Attack

Iran Combines Cyberattacks and Influence Operations During Escalations

An article published by Calcalist (Ctech) states that Microsoft's annual cyber defense report, based on telemetry from July 2025 to June 2026, ranks Israel second globally in observed cyber threat activity with 7.6 percent, behind the United States, and identifies Iran as the main state-backed source of attacks on it. Israel was the target of 39 percent of activity from Tehran-linked actors, and Microsoft notes that during periods of heightened regional tension, Iranian state-linked campaigns increasingly converged cyberattacks, kinetic military actions and foreign influence operations to maximise operational and psychological impact.


Alongside continued espionage, Microsoft also observed a marked shift toward disruptive and destructive capabilities such as data wipers and operational technology disruptions, and a 21 percent year-on-year rise in ransomware incidents in Israel despite a 3 percent global decline, which it assesses reflects Iran's integration of ransomware into its hybrid warfare strategy. The report adds that AI enables larger-scale campaigns and more convincing personalised phishing, while Iranian groups rely heavily on exploiting known vulnerabilities and unpatched internet-facing systems, with credential theft and phishing the primary initial-access vectors.


Source: Calcalist Tech (CTech). The Flydubai Hijacking Attempt Exposes a Gap in Israel’s Aviation Security System. [online] Published 4 October 2026. Available at: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/flt3vrcaq


[AI Related Articles]


AI Chatbots Cite Partisan 'Pink Slime' Sites on Midterms

A report published by NewsGuard's Reality Check states that a NewsGuard report published in POLITICO Magazine found that leading AI chatbots, asked about midterm candidates and issues covered by secretly partisan websites posing as independent local news, cited those 'pink slime' sites 48 percent of the time. Only one of 168 chatbot responses noted that a cited source was partisan, and ChatGPT cited such sites in 70.8 percent of its responses while Grok did so least, in 29.2 percent.


Left-wing networks were cited three times more often on average than right-wing ones, although NewsGuard notes that both sides have invested heavily in pink slime, and as of September 2026 it has identified 1,179 such sites in the US, compared with 937 independent daily newspapers. NewsGuard notes that chatbots give these sites a cost-free route to readers who might otherwise never encounter them, with innocuous names such as 'Ohio Independent' that can appear to be legitimate independent newsrooms in citations, and its analysts describe AI as a 'force multiplier' for partisan and ideological forces.


Source: NewsGuard. AI Chatbots Amplify PAC-Funded News. [online] Available at: https://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/p/ai-chatbots-amplify-pac-funded-news


State Deepfake Laws Offer Voters Limited Protection

An analysis published by The Conversation states that the National Conference of State Legislatures counted 31 US states with election deepfake laws in June 2026, of which 28 require disclosures while Maryland, Minnesota and Texas prohibit certain election deepfakes even when they carry an AI warning. Comparing two laws, the author, an AI policy scholar at the University of Denver, notes that under Louisiana's June 2026 law, an AI warning can satisfy the disclosure rule and federal candidates are excluded, whereas Maryland's May 2026 law bans certain deceptive election deepfakes even with a label, with penalties of up to five years in prison.


The author notes that by early September 2026 the Wesleyan Media Project had identified at least 164 political ads created or enhanced with AI in the 2026 cycle, about 7 in 10 without an AI disclosure, though that count does not establish how many broke a law or misled voters. Research cited in the article suggests warning labels make people less likely to believe misleading posts, but labels that simply identify content as AI-generated do little to change people's stated willingness to engage with or share it and can lower trust in accurate headlines, while neither state's approach guarantees voters will avoid seeing a fabricated video before casting their ballots.


Source: The Conversation. As AI Political Deepfakes Go Viral, Lawmakers Struggle to Keep Up – 2 States’ Laws Show Limits of What They Can Do. [online] Available at: https://theconversation.com/as-ai-political-deepfakes-go-viral-lawmakers-struggle-to-keep-up-2-states-laws-show-limits-of-what-they-can-do-292107


EDMO Reports New Wave of AI Videos Targeting Ukrainian Mobilisation

A publication published by the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) states that in September a new wave of pro-Russian AI-generated videos focused on the mobilisation of Ukrainian soldiers, with several videos and images showing soldiers in handcuffs on buses being forcibly taken away. EDMO notes that the AI-generated videos used over the past two years, usually 5 to 15 seconds long, are realistic enough to appear credible though often not technically deepfakes; that this wave follows an earlier one around the Russian offensive on Pokrovsk in late 2025, and that the videos are being recirculated in several European countries with subtitles in different languages.


EDMO adds that the campaign also uses the older technique of real footage with false captions, such as videos of a Kyiv protest against tree felling presented as civilians being taken away for disrupting a recruitment operation, and that the wave coincides, in a timing it calls perhaps not coincidental, with Ukrainian advances north of Lyman under Operation Vivaldi and reports of a possible new Russian mobilisation. It describes the most concerning element as the relatively low quality and limited coordination of these operations, arguing that the potential for technical and tactical improvement is enormous.


Source: European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO). War in Ukraine: AI-Powered Disinformation Targets Mobilization. [online] Available at: https://edmo.eu/publications/war-in-ukraine-ai-powered-disinformation-targets-mobilization/


GPTZero Finds One-Fifth of UN Assembly Speech Words AI-Drafted

An investigation published by GPTZero states that its investigations team ran 1,267 speeches from 16 General Assembly meetings of the 81st UN session, held between September 08th to 26th, 2026, through its AI detection model and classified 203 as AI-generated, together containing 107,408 of 553,534 words, or 19.4 percent. Among English-language speeches the share rose to more than one in three, 165 of 401, and speeches by the presidents of Kenya, Liberia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, the prime minister of Bhutan and the vice president of Nigeria were rated 100 percent AI-generated.


GPTZero says its detector has an extremely low false-positive rate, citing a test on all 191 national statements from the 2022 General Debate, held before ChatGPT's release, in which it flagged none, and it counted only speeches labelled 'AI' as flagged, not counting words from 'mixed' speeches as AI-generated. It notes that several AI-flagged speeches repeated the same tropes in nearly identical words, that speeches by Kenyan President William Ruto and Sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio were flagged in both 2025 and 2026, and it has published its full dataset for reproducibility.


Source: GPTZero. Words from the Machine: Is AI Ghostwriting the United Nations General Assembly? [online] Available at: https://gptzero.me/news/words-from-the-machine-is-ai-ghostwriting-the-united-nations-general-assembly/


[General Reports]


Deepfake BBC Clip Fuels False India-Israel Flydubai Plot Claim

A fact-check published by NewsGuard's Reality Check states that South Asia-based social media users baselessly claimed that Parag Jain, secretary of India's foreign intelligence agency, and national security adviser Ajit Doval held secret talks with Mossad to stage the hijacking of the Israel-bound Flydubai flight as a 'false flag' to blame Iran and Arab countries. The accounts cited a 15-second video in which BBC reporter Sally Bundock appears to name an Indian passenger as the attempted hijacker, and the claim appears to have originated in a September 30th, 2026, X post by user @ThokaReturns that received 116,000 views.


NewsGuard found that the footage of Bundock came from an unrelated September 29th, 2026, segment about OpenAI's latest chatbot model with an AI voiceover added, that her mouth moved out of sync with the audio, and that the detection tool Undetectable.AI rated the audio 99 percent likely AI-generated. BBC Verify reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh said no such report ever appeared on the BBC News channel, while Israeli officials said the co-pilot, an Omani national, stabbed the captain, an Indian national, and tried to crash the aircraft before passengers and crew intervened.


Source: NewsGuard. Flydubai False-Flag Claim on Faked Evidence Spreads Online. [online] Available at: https://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/p/flydubai-false-flag-claim-on-faked


Tylenol-Autism Misinformation Drew Most TikTok Views, Study Finds

An article published by Healio states that researchers who analysed 53 TikTok videos on acetaminophen (Tylenol) and autism posted between September and November 2025, after the FDA and HHS launched a campaign claiming a link despite a lack of evidence, found that 28.3 percent contained misinformation yet accounted for 52.4 percent of total views. The analysis was presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference & Exhibition, and the researchers told Healio that a single misinformation video reached 10.3 million views, over a third of all views in the sample, while videos by health professionals were all accurate but lacked the same viral exposure.


In a follow-up audit of 65 Instagram accounts belonging to children's hospitals, medical professional societies and state health departments, the researchers found that only 14 institutions, or 21.5 percent, posted a response to the misinformation between September 22nd, 2025, and November 15th, 2025, and that no state health department posted on the topic. The authors warn that providers 'are often working against the algorithm' and suggest pediatricians proactively share information on viral topics before patients ask.


Source: Healio. HHS Claim Fueled Misinformation About Tylenol, Autism on TikTok. [online] Published 3 October 2026. Available at: https://www.healio.com/news/pediatrics/20261003/hhs-claim-fueled-misinformation-about-tylenol-autism-on-tiktok 


Egypt Detains Entire Newsroom of Fact-Checking Outlet Matsada2sh

An article published by Index on Censorship states that Egyptian security forces detained six journalists who make up the editorial team of the fact-checking newsroom Matsada2sh in a coordinated operation spanning several governorates in less than 24 hours, raiding homes and confiscating devices without showing warrants. According to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), which represents all six, none had been brought before a judicial authority at the time of writing, and the arrests raised the number of Egyptian journalists detained in connection with their work to 26.


The Interior Ministry accused Matsada2sh, founded in 2018 and known for fact-checking government statements, of being part of the 'media committees of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood group', spreading 'false and fabricated news' and receiving foreign funding. EIPR advocacy director Lobna Darwish said the authorities aim to take an entire independent media platform offline by arresting its whole team, and warned that invoking terrorism allegations may be used to undermine the journalists' due-process rights, and said the ministry's statement treats journalistic activity as a national security issue.


Source: Index on Censorship. Egypt: Six Journalists from Matsada2sh Face Crackdown on Fact-Checking Press. [online] Published October 2026. Available at: https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2026/10/egypt-six-journalists-matsada2sh-fact-checking-press-crackdown/


CViral 'New' Gaza Satellite Images Are Months Old

An investigation published by Bellingcat states that viral social media posts and news articles claimed Google had updated its satellite imagery over Gaza, showing huge destruction in areas including Rafah, but that the imagery was not entirely new. A Google spokesperson said the latest Gaza imagery had been available since June 2026, Google Earth Pro users had been analysing what appears to be the same imagery as early as May, and the images themselves were captured by Airbus in February 2026.


Using Planet Labs SkySat imagery taken in September, seven months after the images shown on Google, Bellingcat shows that buildings near Rafah's municipal stadium and in the Tal as Sultan area have since been demolished and that more of Bani Suheila has been reduced to rubble, with an IDF outpost visible, while other Planet Labs imagery shows the IDF has continued razing large parts of Shujaiya and Jabaliya while building outposts. Bellingcat says the images appear to show that Israel has not stopped reducing buildings to rubble despite the official ceasefire; Israel previously told media the mass demolitions were part of an effort to 'demilitarize' Gaza. Bellingcat notes that with international journalists still largely unable to enter, satellite imagery remains one of the only ways to assess the destruction.


Source: Bellingcat. Viral Google Maps Images Shared Widely This Week Show Gaza Ruins. We Obtained More Recent Satellite Imagery. [online] Published 1 October 2026. Available at: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/middle-east/2026/10/01/viral-google-maps-images-shared-widely-this-week-show-gaza-ruins-we-obtained-more-recent-satellite-imagery/


Matching Community Language Boosts Clicks on Reliable Information

An article published by The Conversation states that researchers who spent months observing Australian Facebook communities sharing anti-vaccination and far-right narratives tested whether rewording ads that link to reliable government or government-affiliated resources could help them reach audiences who might otherwise overlook them. In 11 of 12 comparisons, people were more likely to click when the wording reflected the communities' language, and a vaccination message worded in the communities' style was about 52 percent more likely to be clicked than a neutral one, although the authors note they changed several wording features together and cannot identify which one made the difference.


Using three fictional personas, a young mother worried about vaccination, a retired teacher and a young man interested in fitness and technology, the researchers matched tone to each audience while keeping image, sponsor and linked resource identical; school-education ads drew clicks 6 percent of the time with familiar wording against 1.1 percent with neutral wording. The authors present this as a way to reach people not looking for reliable information, a question they say is left open by content removal, warning labels, and Community Notes, which Meta began introducing after ending US third-party fact-checking in April 2025, even though these approaches have had some impact.


Source: The Conversation. A New Study Finds That to Counter Misinformation Online, We Need to Copy Its Style. [online] Available at: https://theconversation.com/a-new-study-finds-that-to-counter-misinformation-online-we-need-to-copy-its-style-293220


Vietnamese in Japan Describe Mistrust Amid False Narratives Online

An article published by The Japan Times states that Vietnamese resident Khanh Nguyen Phu describes a developing cycle of mistrust in Japan as the foreign community has become a hot-button political issue, with videos with hundreds of thousands of views purporting to show criminal activity or calling Vietnam a nation of criminals plentiful online, some of them calling for the mass deportation of Vietnamese people living in Japan. Shinichi Yamaguchi, a professor at the Center for Global Communications at the International University of Japan, outlines three categories of false narratives about foreign nationals: purported surges in crime, including after disasters; false statistics about high numbers of foreign nationals claiming welfare and abusing public systems; and fearmongering about demographic replacement and mass immigration.


Yamaguchi says such material is hard to disprove because it is hypothetical, since 'if any foreign national is later arrested for anything, that arrest is treated as proof', and that AI is making disinformation harder to detect; in his 2024 survey, on average only 14.5 percent of people who had seen or heard each of 15 false claims that spread in Japan recognised it as false. The article adds that a remark in August by Kimi Onoda, the minister overseeing policy on foreign nationals, that 1 in 4 inmates at Fuchu Prison are foreign nationals went viral, although the prison holds a disproportionately high share because of its language support and other accommodations, and foreign nationals make up 6.9 percent of the prison population nationwide compared with 3.2 percent of the entire population.


Source: The Japan Times. Vietnamese Community in Japan Targeted by Disinformation. [online] Published 4 October 2026. Available at: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2026/10/04/issues/vietnamese-community-disinformation/


[Appendix - Frameworks to Counter Disinformation]


EU Resilience Centre Launches Counter-Disinformation Stakeholder Platform

An article published by The Brussels Times states that the European Centre for Democratic Resilience has launched the first phase of a Stakeholder Platform, starting cooperation with the European Digital Media Observatory and the European Fact-Checking Standards Network, the European Commission announced. The platform will link independent stakeholders across the EU, including civil society organisations, media, fact-checkers, researchers and media literacy professionals, and will open to more participants in a second phase, after a call is published this autumn.


The Commission said projects under way at the Centre, which began operating in February 2026, include an EU Blueprint on countering foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) and disinformation, common concepts and methodologies for detecting FIMI and a handbook on elections, and the Centre also cited a 'Train-the-Trainers' programme to upskill government officials across member states. A broader version of the Stakeholder Platform is planned for spring 2027.


Source: The Brussels Times. EU Takes Aim at Disinformation as New Network Bridges Research and Policy. [online] Available at: https://www.brusselstimes.com/eu-affairs/2340363/eu-takes-aim-at-disinformation-as-new-network-bridges-research-and-policy


Google Calls Fabricated Author Profiles Deceptive

An article published by Futurism states that Google has added guidance to its rules for 'helpful, reliable, people-first content' telling sites to 'avoid using deceptive authorship information' and describing fabricated creator profiles, such as AI-generated headshots, made-up names or false credentials, as 'a form of deception' that makes a page untrustworthy to users and to Google's automated quality systems. Futurism reports that the change follows a slew of reporting on content mills, including its own investigation into Brown Brothers Media, which it says used fake journalists and experts across a network of AI-powered content mills and halted publication after Google suppressed its sites in Search and Google News.


Futurism notes that similar schemes using fabricated bylines have been exposed in Canada, Florida and Rhode Island, including a Canadian publication caught plagiarising other outlets under the name of a fabricated Indigenous journalist. It questions whether the crackdown will help a media ecosystem facing an existential crisis, arguing that Google's own AI summaries are crowding out links to original reporting.


Source: Futurism. Google Updates Guidelines on Fake Bylines and AI-Generated Headshots. [online] Available at: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/google-updates-guidelines-fake-bylines-ai-generated-headshots


Poland's New Centre to Unify State Counter-Disinformation Efforts

An article published by 112 Ukraine, citing UATV, states that Poland has introduced a government centre dedicated to fighting disinformation, the Centrum Walki z Dezinformacją (CWD), announced by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which will operate under the Ministry of Digital Affairs. Its primary mission includes coordinating government actions and identifying and exposing false narratives spread to mislead the public, to unify the efforts of state agencies against information threats.


Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski said that 'the challenge of information warfare has become one of the most significant issues facing modern democratic nations'. The article presents the center as a response to escalating information-warfare threats to public opinion and democratic processes, intended to strengthen Poland's information security and protect citizens from manipulation.


Source: 112.ua. Poland Creates Government Center to Combat Disinformation and Coordinate State Institutions. [online] Available at: https://112.ua/en/polsa-stvorue-uradovij-centr-borotbi-z-dezinformacieu-dla-koordinacii-derzavnih-struktur-188793


RSF Urges EU to Keep Funding Anti-Propaganda Satellite Package

An article published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) states that at a conference it held with the Permanent Representation of Estonia to the EU in Brussels on September 29th, 2026, it called on the EU to invest in exiled journalists and renew funding for the Svoboda satellite package, which RSF launched in 2024 to counter Kremlin propaganda. Around 15 Russian-language channels are now accessible through it in Belarus, to 4.5 million households in Russia and to 800,000 households in Ukraine's occupied territories, and its main funding, from the EU's DG CONNECT, ends at the end of October 2026.


RSF argues that satellite transmissions are hard for state authorities to block and can survive internet shutdowns, citing a team estimate that viewing sessions rose by about 58 percent between April 2026 and the projected end of September 2026, and an EHESS study estimating a monthly audience of 905,300 to 1,810,600 viewers, excluding Russia and Belarus. It describes exiled journalists as one of the best lines of defense against Russian propaganda, noting that between 1,500 and 1,800 Russian journalists have fled to the EU since the 2022 invasion, many of them financially unstable and facing transnational repression.


Source: Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Brussels: RSF Rallies EU Institutions and Exiled Journalists to Counter Kremlin Propaganda Through Independent Russian-Language Media. [online] Available at: https://rsf.org/en/brussels-rsf-rallies-eu-institutions-and-exiled-journalists-counter-kremlin-propaganda-through


[CRC Glossary]


The nature and sophistication of the modern Information Environment is projected to continue to escalate in complexity. However, across academic publications, legal frameworks, policy debates, and public communications, the same concepts are often described in different ways, making collaboration, cooperation, and effective action more difficult.


To ensure clarity and establish a consistent frame of reference, the CRC is maintaining a standard glossary to reduce ambiguity and promote terminological interoperability. Its scope encompasses foundational concepts, as well as emerging terms relating to Hostile Influence and Cyfluence.


As a collaborative project maintained with input from the community of experts, the CRC Glossary is intended to reflect professional consensus. We encourage you to engage with this initiative and welcome contributions via the CRC website.










 
 
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