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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/world/middleeast/iran-fake-news-report.html
New Report Shows How a Pro-Iran Group Spread Fake News Online
(New York Times) Scott Shane and Ronen Bergman - Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto, says it discovered a pro-Iranian influence operation that used elaborate look-alike websites and social media to spread bogus articles online and to attack Iran's adversaries. Gabrielle Lim, a fellow at Citizen Lab, called the pro-Iran operation "a sprawling disinformation assembly line" that has operated since at least 2016. Raz Zimmt, an expert on Iran at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies and a former Israeli military intelligence officer, said Iran has turned to cyberattacks and online influence campaigns in part because of military weakness. Citizen Lab said it had identified 73 web domains created by the group, 135 ersatz articles it had posted and 11 fake identities like Mona A. Rahman, often used as bylines on the fake articles.