Israeli firm team Jorge says it rigged more than 30 elections
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A mysterious Israeli cyber company is developing ongoing influence operations targeting elections around the world, a consortium of more than 30 news organizations reports. The company’s CEO, a former Israel Special Forces agent named Tal Hanan, has boasted of pinning undercover journalists that his team of psychologist-war-leaders was involved in “33 presidential actions.” [political] campaigns, 27 of which were successful,” the consortium reports say.
Reporters from a cadre of respected news outlets, including The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Haaretz, Le Monde and dozens of others, worked together to investigate the activities of “Team Jorge” – a shadowy cyber firm that claims to do commissioned work for intelligence agencies, companies and political parties. Hanan, who admitted on video that his company is currently “involved in an election in Africa,” also said his team has been involved in two “major projects” in the US, though he says he never works at the “party level.” [of] Politics” in America
Journalists from several branches went undercover, disguised as potential “Jorge” customers, to discover the true identity of the CEO and better understand the company’s activities. In secretly recorded meetings at one of the company’s offices in Modi’in, Israel, Hanan and his brother Zohar, who also works for the company, claimed that they offer a variety of shady services, some of which obviously sound illegal. At great cost, “Jorge” is allegedly using hacking tools, disinformation and blackmail to covertly manipulate political races and discredit public figures around the world.
Among other things, Team Jorge claims to sell a disinformation software, Advanced Impact Media Solutions or AIMS, which generates hordes of fake social media accounts and then uses it to manipulate online conversations and communities. Jorge combines this software with other disinformation tactics like fake Facebook groups and blogs to spread information quickly across online ecosystems and amplify targeted smear campaigns.
AIMS is said to be able to generate compelling social media profiles which can then be used for disinformation operations. The Guardian reports:
Hanan demonstrated the Aims interface, scrolled through dozens of avatars, and showed how to create fake profiles on the fly by using tabs to select nationality and gender, then matching profile pictures to names. “It’s Spanish, Russian, you see Asians, Muslims. Let’s find a candidate together,” he told Undercover reporters before settling on an image of a white woman. “Sophia Wilde, I like the name. British. She already has email, date of birth, everything.”
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This type of automated “disinformation-as-a-service” platform has already been written about. A report last year claimed that a cybersecurity firm in Russia, 0Day Technologies, owned a similar tool that could manipulate social media trends on a “massive scale” through automated bot account generation and manipulation. However, Hanan’s software sounds potentially more advanced. For one, Haaretz reports that the software…
…automatically create verified accounts on dozens of websites. These go well beyond Twitter and Facebook to include communications app Discord and interactive live streaming service Twitch, as well as sites like Reddit, Amazon and Airbnb, and even gaming sites.
Hanan also told reporters that his team uses private proxies — a VPN-like service that can disguise the true origins of web traffic — to fool the social media platforms they operate on into believing the accounts would be run by real people.
There are many more bizarre and alarming claims Hanan made to reporters during their conversation. Among the most frightening is that “Jorge” routinely uses hacking operations targeting insecure telecommunications protocols to break into Gmail and Telegram accounts. During the secretly recorded meeting, Hanan claimed to show reporters an example of an African official whose Telegram account had been hacked. Hanan appeared to be able to scroll through the officer’s contacts, messages, and other sensitive information. Such hacking operations are often part of targeted efforts to identify and leak damning information or gather relevant information that can then be used to sow division or drama between a particular individual and their contacts.
“One of the greatest things is putting sticks between the right people, you know,” Hanan told reporters. “And I can text him what I think of his wife, or what I think of his last speech, or I can tell him I promised him I’d be my next chief of staff, okay?”
Russia and Israel are also places where “Jorge” doesn’t interfere, he said. The Guardian further reports that during an operation in 2015, Hanan’s company is said to have worked with Cambridge Analytica – the now-defunct psychological warfare contractor who worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to influence the presidency race in Nigeria.
Who is Hanan really? Both Hanan brothers were operating under false names when interviewed by reporters. However, the outlets’ investigation revealed an online biography that claimed Tal Hanan was a former special forces agent who specialized in explosives. He also claims to be the CEO of at least two other companies, Tal Sol Energy, and an intelligence firm, Demoman International Ltd., which is listed in an official register of defense companies on the Israel Defense Ministry’s website. He has also apparently claimed experience training law enforcement agencies, including federal agencies within the United States. Hanan has also apparently claimed that Team Jorge has no fewer than six offices and a hundred employees worldwide.
