Analysis of global takedown attempts targeting Qurium’s Bifrost Mirrors
Qurium Media Foundation has uncovered multiple takedown requests submitted to Google targeting its Bifrost mirror service, an initiative designed to keep independent journalism accessible in countries with heavy Internet censorship. Qurium’s investigation reveals coordinated international efforts to suppress journalism and erase investigative reporting through legal mechanisms. The takedown demands came from state-linked institutions and reputation management firms operating in Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Russia, and Venezuela.
When Kehr meets VexTrio
The investigation is based on our previous research on Doppelganger’s infrastructure and focuses on the open question regarding the use of hidden front-end-proxies to display different content depending on the user, so called Cloaking service. The discovery of the cloaking service used by Doppelganger led us to a wider network of actors involved in a variety of scams and cyber criminal activities such as the traffic distribution system VexTrio .
The “Delete Negative Links” Industry
In April 2024, Qurium received an email from “Alissa Muncy” claiming that an article from the Peruvian investigatory newspaper Ojo Publico – about the money laundry of Joaquín Ramírez – was an infringement of copyright. Mrs. Muncy pointed us to the website infouse.exposure[.]co as the original source of the investigation. Our past experience of battling fake DMCA requests made us curious to find out who Mrs Muncy really was and who she was working for.
How Russia uses EU companies for propaganda
– Exposing The Evil Empire of Doppelganger Disinformation Executive summary In September 2022 Qurium in collaboration with EU DisinfoLab exposed for the first time a Russia-based influence operation network that had been operating in Europe since at least May 2022, that later became known as “Doppelganger“. Two years after the release of the investigation, the […]
A journey into the Crypt of cloned media
The Scam Machinery – Did you see the Le Monde article revealing how Le-Pen earned a fortune on crypto trading? I checked out the trading platform she was using and got quite impressed. Simple to use, transparent trading, free demos with money to use, and personal contact with a professional trader. I left my number […]
Deep fake of Maria Ressa connected to Russian cyberscam network
A deep fake video of Maria Ressa promoting the crypto-currency scam “Bitcoin Method” was released on Facebook on 6 February 2024. The AI edited video was based on Ressa’s appearance in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from November 2022, where she was invited to discuss her insights about Democracy and freedom and the danger […]
Russian disinformation against Zelenskyy exposed on Times Square billboard
On 20 November 2023 a group of Twitter accounts shared a message with almost 200 media outlets and fact-checking organizations that included a video from a billboard in Time Square, New York. The 27 seconds long video showed an advertisement for a drug rehab center in Los Angeles that included a statement from the American […]
Hundreds of sites cloned to promote a Chinese gambling network
Our investigation started when the Philippine media outlet MindaNews, the news arm of the Mindanao Institute of Journalism, made Qurium aware that they had found a clone of their website translated to Chinese. When looking into the case, we quickly realized that Minda News’ clone was just a small part of a large plot to […]
Under the hood of a Doppelgänger
Media clones serving Russian propaganda This work is the result of a collaboration with EU DisinfoLab an independent non-profit organization focused on tackling sophisticated disinformation campaigns targeting the EU. EU DisinfoLab has during the past three months been investigating a large disinformation campaign targeting western audience with pro-Russian propaganda. While our partner has focused on […]
Dark Ops Undercovered: Episode IV – Reputation Control and content take down
The 23th of March 2021, Qurium received a request for content take down from Maka Angola, this time regarding an article from 2017 about Raul Randi Kanhama Gomes and the contracts awarded to Angola Offshore Services (Panama Papers) from MSTelecom. MSTelecom is a telecommunications subsidiary of the Sonangol Group, the state petroleum company of Angola. […]
