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Romania's Prosecutor General Alex Florence said on Tuesday that Romania was the preferred target of large, hybrid campaigns in the context of the 2024 elections.

“From the investigations carried out at the level of the General Prosecutor’s Office, the conclusion can be drawn at this moment, based on some elements that we will present to you in detail in the following, regarding the fact that Romania has been the main target of some large, hybrid campaigns, in the context of the electoral elections in 2024, the hostile actors aiming at the continuous modeling of the public opinion, the destabilization of the decision-making capacity of the authorities and the dilution of the degree of cohesion.

He explained that this campaign was manifested by cyber attacks and measures to destabilize public order.

“The campaign launched in the Romanian space was manifested both through cyber attacks, measures to destabilize the public order, as well as through campaigns to micro-target the population, disinformation and influence the electorate. On this level was highlighted the offensive character of the hybrid aggressions targeting Romania, which exploited, on the one hand, the vulnerabilities of the national audiences, both through the versatile use of social platforms, respectively by eluding the policies present at their level on the way of promoting the people in the political spectrum, as well as by social engineering techniques aimed at segmenting the population in order to further deliver personalized messages to the audiences.

“Hybrid warfare, by comparing it to traditional warfare, which is more obvious, more transparent, in terms of the material results it produces, is much more insidious, but with results of influencing the way in which the social-economic life of a much larger state is carried out. Because it involves the use in parallel, together or separately, but clearly coordinated, of several types of instruments targeting a state, whether we are talking about different economic, administrative instruments, cyber attacks, secret actions destabilizing for the public order of that state, political subversion and, of course, disinformation and propaganda,” explained Alex Florence.

He noted that certain news that may seem isolated is part of a conjugated effort.

“It is important to make these clarifications for the public to understand that certain news that may sometimes seem disparate, isolated, unnecessitated, unrelated, are, in fact, part of a conjugated war and an effort conjoined as a distinct part of these hybrid warfare instruments,” the attorney general said.

He also said that cyber-attacks are not random or isolated events.

“As far as cyber attacks are concerned, we have to understand that news of the kind that has been circulated in the public space, regarding attacks on Romanian airports a few years ago, of an entire system of surveillance cameras, especially in the border area with Ukraine, or the attacks during the course of 2024 on many public institutions and government agencies in Romania are not random events, they are not isolated events, but once again they are part of a generally coordinated hybrid attack.

He added that the reports he transmits weekly by the National Directorate of Cybernetics Security on his website highlights precisely the frequency, amplitude and especially how these attacks are carried out.

Alex Florence also recalls the fact that Russian cyberattacks intensified on Romanian institutions and companies in 2024.

“The most dangerous attacks, especially those of ransomware, were fully associated with pro-Russian groups such as Lockbit, Lynx, Akira or Ransom Hub and stood out for a particularly intense activity last year. These attacks targeted more than 13 public administration institutions, 12 transport companies of national interest, 17 banking institutions and so on. Also, with strict reference to the electoral process carried out last year, we must take into account that more than 85,000 cyber attacks launched on the electoral infrastructure that aimed to obtain and exfiltrate credentials especially from the Central Electoral Authority and the Central Electoral Bureau, around that period, many of which were subsequently disseminated in groups of Telegram from Russian infrastructure,” the Prosecutor General said.

He said the destabilizing actions that may seem to be isolated elements are part of a coordinated campaign targeting Romania, but also other Eastern European states.

“We recall on this occasion the situation of 2024 of the Colombian citizen, arrested for entering Romania under the coordination of a certain person from Russia with the intention of blowing up objectives located in the proximity of a complex in Ilfov County, where there was a degenerative landfill, as well as two oil extraction wells and a natural gas measuring station,” explained Alex Florence.

Similar actions have taken place in other eastern European states

He said similar actions took place in the Czech Republic and Poland.

“It is worth noting that similar situations are found in other Eastern European states at the same time, when again both in Prague, in the Czech Republic and in Poland, then those actions having the expected result, producing an attack on some often critical infrastructure and in all these are also involved in Colombian citizens. What shows us from the investigations carried out, the fact that behind these coordinated, destabilizing attacks at the level of internal public order, there is coordination on the part of a foreign state actor and with the direct coordination of these political persons engaged and engaged especially in the South American area, the penetration in the Eastern European countries and the conduct of this type of attack,” the Prosecutor General of Romania stated.

He stressed that another component of hybrid warfare is political subversion that can take on different components.

“We are talking, on the one hand, about careful cultivation and often below the limit of detection of some media affairs networks, but also internal political sources, able to influence in one form or another government decisions. We remember the relations and visits made to the Russian embassy and developed in the last two years by several Romanian parliamentarians. But an important element that is found in the Romanian space is at the moment the instrumentation of the Romanian extremist groups. We also remember the case of Marian Moţoc, a character sent to court by the Prosecutor’s Office this year and who had entered into direct coordination with the Embassy of the Russian Federation at that time, in this case with the Russian military attaché,” said Alex Florence.

Intensifying extremist messages in November 2024

He also explained that in November 2024, at the level of extremist communities, there was an intensification of hateful and violent messages.

“We must bear in mind that, starting in November 2024, at the level of extremist communities, there has been an increase in narratives and messages inciting hatred and violence associated with the campaign to promote an independent candidate and have created a climate of panic at the level of society. This increase in the volume of instigating content incriminating violent actions was initiated since the first round of elections, but the evolution is systematically achieved by promoting elements of hate incitement content, generated through artificial intelligence.

He said this narrative corresponds to the pattern in which the Russian Federation operates.

“This type of narratives and the way of making the online content correspond to the shareholding pattern of the Russian Federation, being reported in other states, such as Moldova or Georgia. Also, pro-Russian propaganda channels were used, as we will see the promotion of these elements of content”, explained Alex Florence.

He said that even at the level of social media, inciting hateful and violent actions were identified.

“Last but not least, ,at the level of social networks, hateful messages were identified in violent actions, including against the authorities, most of the threats being outlined around the idea of general upheaval, the messages containing phrases that exploited nostalgic feelings by making the majority reference to the Revolution of December 1989. It is an inflation of such messages in the online area, created with artificial intelligence, which proves an absolutely artificial behavior, but which generates a tension, a state of effervescence among the communities to which they are addressed and, obviously, these messages are subsequently taken over and viralized from various extremist groups at the national level”, declared the Prosecutor General.

Revolution's Hashtag, used in disinformation campaigns

He exemplified this situation with the hashtag of the Revolution.

“It’s a hashtag behind which a whole range of messages of this kind of hate and violence have been viralized around the first juror of the presidential laws. It is a hashtag that comes and is launched somewhere from Russian infrastructure on Telegram channels. He is subsequently viralized through a whole support infrastructure. He is automatically associated with two of the former independent candidate’s hashtags and reaches a peak of viralization at more than 1,800,000 daily views and 176 videos posted daily, all with the same type and the same version of the message,” said Alex Florence.

The Prosecutor General specified that since November 27, 2024, an intensification of the campaign to promote the independent candidate in the presidential elections has been found.

“Analyses have shown that since November 27 there has been an increase in the campaign to promote the presidential candidate at the level of groups known for the dissemination of disinformation narratives, which ensure the connection between the pro-Russian community and other communities generating risks for public order, especially extremist and conspiracist groups.

Thus, narratives were identified through which the candidate is promoted at the level of over 40 groups of this type and totaled over 1,300,000 members. Well, all these actions to promote hateful content reveal an artificial behavior, as I said, the intensity of social effervescences, with that huge volume of content of this type, being manifestly disproportionate to the manifestations in the public space, from the real physical space. This outlines the specific hypothesis of influencing the information space in order to amplify some states of dissatisfaction that are vacavable then by generating large-scale street actions,” the Prosecutor General stated.

He also presented how the Romanian population was targeted to identify certain admissible narratives.

“We must understand that the online ecosystem currently used by actors in the Russian Federation are looking at a wide range of tools, starting from traditional state media sites and components, which are spreading, starting to create certain news and will also be found in Romania and further spread through various websites and blogs created especially for the creation and spread of this content. They are also used in this firm troll toolkit, for those who do not understand what they are talking about fake accounts, those that emminate an official account, and who claim authentic users and entire networks of bots. These are tools that artificially amplify the visibility of a certain content, either through comments or by complimentary clicks and so on,” the Prosecutor General said.

Procurorul general al României: Țara noastră a fost ţinta unor campanii ample, hibride, în contextul alegerilor din 2024

^{Știrile ProTV}

So, I have my arr stack set up to queue downloads through qbittorrent and I've tweaked my release/delay profiles to 720 minutes after release. For some reason my modified version of Sonarr is trying to grab my requested linux .iso's before the official release. Fortunately, I have .mp4 and .mkv filtered in qbittorrent so I don't end up with any of those nasty pirated tv shows, but it clogs up my download client. They'll just sit at 100% complete and seed indefinitely because all the content is filtered to "do not download".

Sonarr sees this as progress in the activity tab and won't attempt to pick up the actual linux iso release when it is official.

New polling conducted by Somos Votantes and the Global Strategy Group between August 26 and September 4 shows that Trump's net approval rating among Latino voters has dropped from -11 points in February to -23 points in September.

His favorability rating has seen a similar drop, from -12 points in February to -20 points in September.

Donald Trump's Approval Rating Crashes With Latino Voters

The president's net approval rating among Latino voters has dropped from -11 points in February to -23 points in September.

^{Martha McHardy (Newsweek)}