Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) will block 10 inauthentic websites set up by foreign actors that could be used to mount hostile information campaigns (HICs) against the city-state, an official statement released on October 22 said.
The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has considered MHA’s findings and is satisfied that it is necessary to issue directions under Section 16 of the Broadcasting Act 1994 to Internet Access Service Providers (IASPs) to disable access to these 10 inauthentic websites for users in Singapore.
List of websites
zaobaodaily.com
singaporeinfomap.com
Singaporeera.com
Singdaotimes.com
Todayinsg.com
Lioncitylife.com
Singapuranow.com
Voasg.com
Singdaopr.com
Alamak.io
As per the statement, these 10 websites have been observed to masquerade as Singapore websites by spoofing or using terms associated with Singapore in their domain name and incorporating familiar local features and visuals.
They also carried content on Singapore, some of which were generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). These are common tactics used by malicious foreign actors: build websites which can attract a local following, that may subsequently be used as platforms to mount HICs.
Two of the inauthentic websites (www.zaobaodaily.com and www.singaporeinfomap.com) utilise domain names that are closely related or similar to legitimate Singapore-related websites, and carried content that may mislead their audience into thinking that the content is reflective of official positions or local sentiments.
A second network of seven inauthentic websites utilise the word “Singapore” or associated terms in their domain name (e.g. Singapura, Singdao, Lioncity), and publishes Singapore-related content. They carried content which was identical to that carried by another foreign newswire which appears to have conducted HICs and influence campaigns against other countries.
The last of the ten websites Alamak.io presents itself as a Singapore news website through the use of a Singapore-associated colloquial expression “Alamak” as its domain name and carriage of Singapore-related news articles that paraphrased articles published by local mainstream media. Investigations found that the majority of the articles published on this website were likely to have been written with AI tools.
This website also published commentaries on socio-political issues, including one that falsely alleged that Singapore had allowed other countries to conduct their biological warfare research activities here.
There are many overseas cases where malicious foreign actors had created and used inauthentic news websites to propagate false narratives to sway the target population’s sentiments, in order to advance their own interests. They do so by inciting social tension, exploiting societal fault lines, manipulating elections, or undermining confidence and trust in public institutions.
Most of the websites mentioned in the statement are associated with global networks of inauthentic news websites that have been reported by cybersecurity researchers from Mandiant and The Citizen Lab to have conducted HICs and influence campaigns in other countries.
The MHA said Singaporeans should continue to remain vigilant when consuming online content and be alert to such inauthentic websites and the threat they pose.
(The article is published under a mutual content partnership arrangement between The Free Press Journal and Connected To India)
