According to studies conducted by Google-owned security firm Mandiant in 2023, the two websites are also reportedly part of a system connected to Shanghai Haixun Technology, a Chinese public relations company.
In what scientists dubbed the HaiEnergy control activity, Mandiant discovered a year earlier that websites in this community “present themselves primarily as separate news outlets from various regions across the world and publish articles in 11 languages.”
According to Mandiant, the battle “loaned resources and infrastructure pertaining to Haixun to network and spread content,” by 72 websites targeted at consumers in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
It has carried information criticising the United States and its allies, and supporting the Chinese administration’s transformation of Hong Kong’s electoral system.
Among the other blocked sites, seven have the phrase” Singapore” or associated words – including Singapura, Singdao and Lioncity – in their domain name, and publish articles related to the region.
According to MHA and IMDA,” they carried willing that was similar to that carried by another international newswire, which appears to have carried out HICs and impact campaigns against other nations.”
According to press releases from the PR agency SeaPRwire, these seven websites are part of a system. Additionally, the websites have published articles that were shared across each other as well as on the TimesNewswire site, which, according to the former, has a” proper relationship” with SeaPRwire.
The Citizen Lab, a research firm focused on online threats, reported earlier this year that TimesNewswire even strongly appears in an impact campaign involving at least 123 websites operating in China and posing as regional information outlets in 30 different European, Asian, and Latin American countries to distribute pro-Beijing propaganda.
Around 100 realms linking back to the organization, which has also been linked to the HaiEnergy function, are a major source of the campaign’s information, which is largely sourced from TimesNewswire.
The next site, Alamak. dai, which uses the local vernacular appearance as its site name and features Singapore-related news that paraphrases local media articles, masquerades as a Singaporean website.
CNA and The Straits Times, two Singapore media sources, are among the ones whose articles have occasionally been used as repurposes for an unauthentic website.
According to MHA and IMDA,” studies found that the majority of the content published on this web were good written using Al equipment.”
This website also published commentary on political issues, including one that falsely claimed that Singapore had permitted other nations to conduct their natural warfare research around.
Alamak. fai has carried many articles written by Russia’s ambassador to Singapore Nikolay Kudashev, on issues such as Russia-ASEAN relationships and with stories like” Replacing the Rules-Based Neocolonial Framework”.
REVIEW OF THE LAW FOR European INTERFERENCE
MHA and IMDA added that there were currently no provisions in the Foreign Interference ( Countermeasures ) Act of 2021 to preemptively act against websites, whether inauthentic or not.